OLLENNU J.: The plaintiff claims £G6,000 against the defendants as damages he suffered in consequence of the negligence of a servant of the defendants, in driving a vehicle of the defendants into the plaintiff’s store. The accident took place at about midnight of the 13th to 14th March, 1961. No one was about at the time, except the driver of the defendants’ vehicle. The plaintiff came to the store the next morning and found the vehicle standing in the ruins of the store.
Vehicles do not normally run off the road into buildings; they would only do so in consequence of negligence on the part of the driver, or as a result of inevitable accident. In this case the cause of the accident is peculiarly within the knowledge of one person and one person only, namely, the driver of the defendants. That being so the principle of res ipsa loquitur applies and the presumption is that the accident was caused by negligence of the defendants’ driver. The onus is upon the defendants to rebut that presu…