Breach of duty Flashcards
cases
WAUGH v JAMES K ALLEN LTD (*)
FACTS: Lorry driver in good health but suffers gastric attacks. Fells sick while working. Offered help but refused to rest. Goes on way, few minutes and collapses at wheel. Goes off road and injures people. Also dies. Actually thrombosis. He is not a doctor so not unreasonable for ordinary man to do the same. Not liable.
POL: Voluntary act or omission by defender. “It is whether, as a reasonable man, he ought to have realised he was unfit.” Lord Reid
MUIR v GLASGOW CORPORATION (***)
Gives tea room to picnic party. Need hot water. Boil in kitchen and take through corridor to tea room. Stall in hall selling sweets as well so kids running around. Spill water and scald kids. RISK ASSESSMENT not inherently likely to happen so not unreasonable for manager from ordinary person perspective. REASONABLE AND PROBABLE CONSEQUENCE. ALSO: Defender Objectivity to determine claim (LORD MACMILLAN)
MALCOLM v DICKSON (*)
FACTS: Painter working in dwelling house. Blow lamp incompetently used. Fire. Person in house makes it out safely but goes in multiple times for items. Over exerts and dies. No liability. REASONABLE AND PROBABLE CONSEQUENCE SIT.
POL: “not held responsible for all the results which flow from his negligent act. Practical considerations dictate, and the law accepts, that there comes a point in the sequence of events when liability can no longer be enforced.” LORD JUSTICE CLERK THOMSON.
ROE v MINISTER OF HEALTH
FACTS: Surgery using epidural antistatic. Stored in ampoules in phenol sol. Ampoule has little cracks. Injected. Causes paralysis as phenol sol in nervous system. Not known in 1947. NOT REASONABLE AND PROBABLE AT THIS TIME.
POL: Needs to be in general state of human knowledge at time- “must not look at the 1947 accident with 1954 spectacles.” DENNING L.J.
HUGHES v LA (***)
FACTS: Manhole done by workers. Tent above. Leave unattended. 2 kids go in. Find lamp, drop in followed by rush of flames. Kid falls in. Injured. Breach of duty in range even if scale was not foreseeable. In the range of probable consequences.
POL: This accident was caused by a known source of danger, but caused in a way that could not have been foreseen - LORD REID. “though severe, was not greater than or different in kind from that which may be produced.” PEARCE
JOLLEY v SUTTON LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL (*)
FACTS: Residential area. Rotting boat. Council acknowledged need to remove. Few in area decided to fix and 1 injured. Was foreseeable but way it came about was not.
POL: “What must have been foreseen is not the precise injury which occurred but injury of a given description.” LORD HOFFMANN.
“ The wider risk would also fall within the scope of the council’s duty unless it was different in land from that which should have been foreseen, and either wholly unforeseeable or so remote that it would be brushed aside as far fetched.” LORD HOFFMANN
BOLTON v STONE (*)
FACTS: Cricket ball over fence. Hits someone with serious force. Could be prevented by measures such as a higher fence. REASONABLE MAN- do not need to prevent ALL harm. Dozens went over in decades and very few hit. No need for further management.
POL: To constitute negligence there needs to be probability of the injury.
GILLON v CHIEF CONSTABLE OF STRATHCLYDE POLICE (*)
FACTS: Officer on crowd control. Watching crowd. Player careered off pitch and injured. Very low probability of injury.
MCTEAR v IMPERIAL TOBACCO LTD (*)
FACTS: Addicted to tobacco, Harm to health. Chose to smoke. Assumed the responsibility.
POL: ROLE OF INFORMED CHOICE FOR PROBABILITY OF INJURY. “Individual was well enough served if he was given such information as a normal intelligent person would include in his assessment how he wishes to conduct his life, thus putting him in the position of making an informed choice.” LORD NIMMO SMITH.
PARIS v STEDNEY BOROUGH COUNCIL (*)
FACTS: Worker with only one eye which can see. Hammering at metal object. Piece went into his eye. Not provided with goggles. Liable as reasonable employer would provide due to awareness of danger to that particular employee.
POL: SERIOUSNESS OF INJURY TO THE PURSUER impact on negligence. “The standard of care which the law demands is the care which the ordinary prudent employer would take in all circumstances.”
WATT v HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL (*)
FACTS: Woman trapped. Fire service send lorry with jact. Slips and injures fireman. Claimed should have used specifically adapted lorry. Reasonable employer would have used lorry in the circumstances due to importance of saving a life.
POL: THE VALUE OF THE ACTIVITY IS IMPORTANT. “The risk involved in sending out the lorry was not so great as to prohibit the attempt to save life.” DENNING LJ.
- “Always a question of balancing the risk against the end.”
COMPENSATION ACT 2006 S1
SEE FULL ACT. Essentially need to have regard as to whether a requirement to take steps will prevent a desirable activity or discourage persons from undertaking functions in connection with a desirable activity. VALUE OF ACTIVITY IMPACT ON NELIGENCE.
QUINN v CAMERON AND ROBERTSON LTD (*)
Factory with a lot of dust. Lung condition. Type of apparatus not around. Need foreseeable method to complete task in order for it to be PRACTICAL TO TAKE PRECAUTIONS.
LATIMER v AEC LTD
FACTS: Oil underneath. Floods floor and makes slippy. Use sawdust to counteract. Slipped while carrying a heavy object. Could have closed to clean but would have been too high a cost.
POL: NEED TO LOOK AT THE COST OF PRECAUTIONS AND WHETHER THE REASONABLE EMPLOYER WOULD DO THAT IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES.
TOMLINSON v CONGLETON BOROUGH COUNCIL
“THESE FACTORS NEED TO BE BALANCED AGAINST EACH OTHER”
