What is Duty Of Care?
Duty of Care is a moral or legal obligation to ensure the safety or well-being of others.
You must take care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be harmful to your neighbour. Consider the Neighbour Principle
What is a TORT?
Tort is a civil wrong leading to legal liability. The plaintiff (person wronged) brings the action against the respondent seeking remedy (usually damages or compensation) e.g. defamation or negligence.
What are the Five Freedoms?
- Freedom from thirst, hunger and malnutrition.
- Freedom from physical and thermal discomfort.
- Freedom from pain, injury and disease.
- Freedom to express most normal patterns of behaviour.
- Freedom from fear and distress.
What are the Four D’s?
- Duty – A duty was owed by the defendant to the plaintiff.
- Dereliction – There was a breach of that duty.
- Damage – The plaintiff suffered loss or damage as a result.
- Directness – There was a direct relationship between the breach of duty and the damages that was foreseeable.
What is The Neighbour Principle?
You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour.
What is the purpose of the Four D’s?
They are factors needed to establish before a negligence claim can succeed.
What are the defenses to a claim in negligence?
- One or more of the required elements for a claim are not present (4 D’s).
- Voluntary assumption of risk. (Volenti non fit injuria).
- Intervening factors. (Novus actus interveniens).
- Contributory negligence.
What is Voluntary Assumption of risk?
Generally this means that if a person chooses to participate in a dangerous activity then they bear the risks that are a normal part of that activity and they are not able to bring a claim against the other party.
What are Intervening Factors?
Essentially the argument is that the act of another has broken the chain of causation, therefore rendering the original negligence act too remote from the damage suffered.
What is Contributory Negligence?
In this defence, the defendant claims that the actions of the plaintiff (person wronged) contributed to the harm or damage. If this is proved then it will reduce the quantum of damages awarded according to the percentage the plaintiff was considered to have contributed to the harm.
What is Vicarious Liability?
Vicarious liability is not strictly speaking a defence to a claim in negligence. However, it is a way of shifting responsibility to the employer.
It is pretty much a way people can blame the boss for not correctly supervising or instructing their worker.
