Overseas Tankship (U.K.) Ltd. v. Miller Steamship Co. [Wagon Mound No. 2]

Oil discharged from the Wagon Mound, docked in Sydney Harbour, spread across the water and later ignited when cotton waste on the surface contacted molten metal dropped by dock workers, destroying a wharf and damaging two ships owned by Miller Steamship Co. (plaintiff); in a separate earlier case (Wagon Mound No. 1), the Privy Council had found Overseas Tankship (defendant) not liable to the wharf operator because the fire was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the oil discharge. In this second action brought by Miller for its damaged ships, the trial court and the Supreme Court of New South Wales again found the likelihood of the oil igniting was too slight to make the damage reasonably foreseeable, and Miller appealed to the Privy Council.