Duty of Care
- Tags
- law
A legal [see page 6, obligation] to maintain a reasonable care in the performance of an act that could cause harm to others. (eg. You can't sell a soft drink if it's deadly.)
See the [see page 7, neighbour principle].
The duty of care is either based on precedent or:
- Analogising the current case to previous cases.
- Using the [see page 8, Caparo test].
Other Kinds of Loss
Damages for physical injury are pretty common, but for other kinds of loss it varies.
Economic
Generally only works for none Pure Economic Loss, which is loss arising directly from negligence, not the consequences of that negligence. For example Spartan Steel v Martin & Co. LTD couldn't claim the profits it lost from being unable to melt steel for 15 hours, because that was a consequence of their furnace being damaged (from negligence) not the negligence itself.
Negligent Misstatement
A special classification of Pure Economic Loss which is actionable. It can be applied in [see page 12, certain circumstances] where the source is trusted and the information is expected to be reliable and it's reasonable to trust it.
Pschiatric
You can now claim for pure psychiatric injury. Pure means no physical injury is required to claim psychiatric injury (which used to be the case).
Victim must demonstrate a psychiatric illness (eg. PTSD).
The rules also differ depending on whether the claimant is a:
| Type | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Primary victim | Psychiatric injury from something that happened to them. |
| Secondary victim | Psychiatric injury from something happening to someone else. See [see page 15, conditions]. |
Note: Primary victims can only be considered a victim if they were directly injured by the negligence. An accident which lead to no injury but did lead to a fear of the accident repeating isn't enough to constitute a psychiatric injury. Eg. Rothwell v Chemical insulating co ltd where Rothwell was exposed to asbestos but suffered no injury. He developed a fear of future asbestos injuries.
Case Studies
Haley v London electric board.
- Company starts work on a street and puts up sign.
- Doesn't put up barrier.
- Blind man falls into hole and hurts himself.
- Courts favour the blind man because his injury was foreseeable. You may not be able to foresee a blind man in a bunch of situations but a city street isn't one of them.
Plasgraf v Long Island Railroad
- Two men running to join a train.
- One is helped onto it by an employee.
- He dropped a package that exploded.
- Explosion caused a weight some distance away to fall and hit a girl.
- Girl sues employees company for negligence.
- Courts side with company because this wasn't foreseeable. You couldn't have predicted helping someone onto the train would lead to what happened.
Spartan Steel v Martin & Co. LTD
- Spartan steel has steelworks.
- Martin & Co. was doing work near SS and damaged the cable used for electricity.
- SS didn't own the cable.
- SS lost power for 15 hours causing:
- Furnace damage
- Metal that was being melted was damaged.
- Loss of profits from metals that they could've melted during the outage.
Hedley Byrne v Heller
- Customer put in large order for large advertising campaign.
- HB asked their bank to get Hellers banks info. They said it was OK.
- Customer soon went into liquidation.
- HB sued Hellers bank for giving negligent/misleading information.
In this case they rejected the claim, but established the principle of [see page 12, negligent mistatement].
SO and Marsdan
- SO said you would be able to sell this much petrol per year.
- Local council made law which lowered the number of customers and SO new about it but didn't take it into account.
- Victim bought storefront to sell his petrol. He didn't profit as much as he thought he would.
SO knew of the law but didn't account for it so they were negligent.
Page v Smith
- Page in car accident due to smiths negligence.
- Page was physically unhurt, but he had chronic fatigue syndrome which was in remission but started again due to the crash.
- Relapse of fatigue prevented Page from resuming job as a teacher.
Court held that for a direct victim only physical injury is relevent. In this case physical injury from a car crash is foreseeable. The psychiatric CFS injury is not actionable.
Taylor v Noro
- Claimants mother died 3 weeks after injury from work due to employers negligence.
- Claimant wasn't present at the injury.
- Claimant could not claim Psychiatric injury because she was not temporally and proximate close to the accident.