BL – Initial Post
Please have a read through the information provided below and answer the question with relevant references.
When one person or a company has a duty of care towards another, it could be another person or another company, they have a duty of care and this is a
standard they must live up to. Should they fail to do just that then there is a breach of duty present. If someone is to suffer from a breach of duty,
they will file a case should this breach cause them a loss.
In order to create a case on there being a breach of duty, one must first establish that the defendant owed the claimant a duty of care. If looking at
a workplace, it is common knowledge that there is a duty of care placed upon the employers. It can be argued whether this duty of care is to take
reasonable precautions to eliminate risk, or are they expected to eliminate risk completely?
For example, Latimer v AEC [1953] saw a claimant slip on the factory floor he worked in. The factory had become flooded due to bad weather conditions
and the defendant took necessary steps. A breach of duty was claimed stating ‘that the defendant should have closed the factory if it was unsafe.’ (E-
law resources, n.d) It was decided that there was no breach of duty because the defendant only had to take reasonable precautions to minimise the risk,
which they had done.
When looking at the requirement that damage must be of a foreseeable type, we refer to remoteness of damage. As with the case law above, a negligence
claim was not successful and the flooding due to weather was seen as remote.
Remoteness of damage is used as a mechanism to control liability, and there are rules to assist with the determining of actions. ‘The remoteness of
damage rule limits a defendant’s liability to what can be reasonably justified, ensures a claimant does not profit from an event and aids insurers to
assess future liabilities’. (Bits of law, 2013)
As with remoteness, foreseeability is used to determine proximate cause. The type and manner of harm in claims are limited by law by the scope of
liability based on the foreseeability. (Tikriti, n.d)
Which tests do you think are the most reliable and accurate when dealing with a breach of duty case?
