How have courts dealt with claims for damages arising out of the theft of goods from a house where the front door was left unlocked?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Withers, Evans Ltd. (Trustee of) v. Sterling Circuits Inc., 1988 CanLII 3352 (BC SC):

In Stansbie v. Trornan, [1948] 2 K.B. 48, a householder claimed the value of goods stolen. A contractor carrying out decorations in a plaintiff’s house and knowing that he had been left alone on the premises went to obtain wallpaper. He closed the front door but did not lock it and during his absence, the theft occurred. At p. 52, Tucker L.J. said: … the act of negligence itself consisted in the failure to take reasonable care to guard against the very thing that in fact happened. The reason why the decorator owed a duty to the householder to leave the premises in a reasonably secure state was because otherwise thieves or dishonest persons might gain access to them; and it seems to me that if the decorator was, as I think he was, negligent in leaving the house in this condition, it was as a direct result of his negligence that the thief entered by the front door, which was left unlocked, and stole these valuable goods.

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