Imagine a summer day in a café: a friend buys you a bottle of ginger beer. After drinking most of it, you pour the rest out – and find the decomposed remains of a snail. You’re ill for days. But can you sue the manufacturer, even though you never paid them a penny? That is exactly the question that gave birth to modern negligence law. This chapter shows how that famous snail in a bottle led to a simple idea that now shapes how we all owe care to each other – and what happens when that care falls short.