He concluded that there was no common law support for Donoghue's claim and supported Lord Anderson's judgment in "Mullen". "In a case like the present, where the goods of the defenders are widely distributed throughout Scotland, it would seem little short of outrageous to make them responsible to members of the public for the condition of the contents of every bottle which issues from their works. It is obvious that, if such responsibility attached to the defenders, they might be called on to meet claims of damages which they could not possibly investigate or insure." Lord Tomlin concurred with Lord Buckmaster. While he agreed with Lord Atkin that the duty of care a manufacturer owed to its consumers was the same regardless of the product they produced, he held that no general duty of care existed and that the fact the product was in a sealed container made no difference to the finding of a such duty. He further endorsed concerns that Lord Atkin's broader test of liability would have allowed everyone injured in the Versailles rail accident to be able to claim compensation from the manufacturer of the axle that broke and caused the crash. The suggested "ratio decidendi" (Latin: the reason for the decision) of the case has varied from the narrowest, jokingly suggested by Julius Stone, that there was merely a duty "not to sell opaque bottles of beverage containing dead snails to Scots widows", to the widest, suggested by Lord Normand, who had been one of Stevenson's counsel, that Lord Atkin's neighbour principle was the "ratio". Although the neighbour principle was a critical part of Lord Atkin's reasoning, and was therefore part of the "ratio" of his judgment, neither of the other judges in the majority expressly endorsed the principle. Robert Heuston therefore suggests that case only supports the claims there can be duties in tort even if there is no contract; that manufacturers owe a duty of care to the ultimate consumers of their goods; and possibly that negligence is a separate tort. "No amount of posthumous citation can of itself transfer with retrospective effect a proposition from the status of "obiter dictum" [passing comments] to that of "ratio decidendi"." The legal basis for the claim now settled, the case was returned to the Court of Session for a hearing scheduled for January 1933. In the hearing, Donoghue would have to prove the factual elements of the case that she had claimed, including that there had been a snail in the ginger beer as a result of Stevenson's negligence and that this snail had caused her illness.