Victoria law student Paul Bembrey has stunned legal experts around the world recently by poking holes in the nearly 80-year-old judgement from Donoghue v Stevenson delivered by Lord Atkin in 1932.
The well-known case is a staple of law curriculums throughout the Commonwealth, forming the basis of the common law rule of negligence, and is studied by thousands of students every year. The rule from the case itself has been settled for over a half century but was fundamentally undermined by Bembrey’s inexperienced yet keen eye during the 8.30am Torts class last Thursday.
“Well I know it was a House of Lords judgment, and it’s been studied and scrutinised and followed for years and shit, but I just looked at it and was like, oh hang on, isn’t it kind of bullshit that someone should be held liable for something they didn’t even, like, think would ever happen?” proposed Bembrey, who has since been awarded an honorary Bachelor of Laws by Victoria University.
This groundbreaking discovery has proven divisive within the law faculty, with Dean Toby Schmidt siding with the student’s thesis, that the ‘neighbour principle’ is a “very rats” ruling, and imploring the Supreme Court of New Zealand to take into consideration the possibility of changing the rule. Lecturers Goram Boston and Harry Firristir, however, think that Bembrey is a “super-rude dude who should keep his dang second year-ass shit out of the House of Lords’ junk.”
In other Victoria University news, design student Sassi Baybe has won the National Canon Artistic Originality and Excellence Award with her photograph entitled ‘Girl In Graffitied Alleyway Wearing Summer Dress and Doc Martens Holds Balloon’.
Baybe entered the competition on a whim, having recently purchased what she refers to as her “third arm”, a Canon DSLR camera, on Course-Related Costs.
The camera itself bears no relev-ance to her course, an introductory graphic design paper, but Baybe says that she just “felt a yearning for the photographic arts.
“Well, I’m a really creative person, so obviously I’m doing graphic design, but the camera is… more of a hobby I guess, I just thought that I needed more ways to express my creative juices.”
The now nationally treasured Wunderkind continues, “with the combination of this award and my Tumblr, I’m finally getting the credit I deserve. The next big step is to get my clothing label Antecedent Sermon off the ground.”