legal unit 2 aos1 Flashcards
Purposes of civil law
- Provide guidelines for acceptable behaviour – civil law (including tort law) established what is acceptable and what is not, so that people can live together in harmony and social cohesion can be achieved.
Purposes of civil law
- Protect the rights of individuals – key rights are enshrined in civil law, including the right to be protected from false statements that might damage your reputation,
- Negligence
this occurs when someone owes a duty of care to another person and breaches that duty, causing harm or loss to the other person (e.g. a doctor is careless during a medical procedure and something goes wrong, causing physical injury and pain to the patient).
- Trespass
this occurs when someone interferes with another person, their land or their goods, and that interference causes damage (e.g. destroying another person’s car may give rise to a claim for trespass to goods)
- Nuisance
this relates to an individual’s right to use and enjoy both public and private property
Causation
plaintiff normally needs to prove is causation. The plaintiff must prove that the defendant’s actions caused or resulted in the harm suffered by the plaintiff, and that the harm would not have occurred if the defendant had not acted in the way they did.
Loss
, a plaintiff can only obtain a legal remedy, such as damages, if it can be proved that they have suffered loss or harm.
defamation
this relates to the publication of material that causes damage to another person’s reputation.
Limitation of actions
there is a time period within which a wronged party can sue the wrongdoer. This is known as the limitation of actions. Once that time period has passed, then the defendant can use the defence that the plaintiff is too late to obtain any remedy.
The burden of proof
The burden of proof is the responsibility of proving the facts of a case. This is sometimes called the ‘onus of proof’. In every court case, one party has this responsibility. In a civil case, the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. This means that the plaintiff must present evidence to establish that the defendant is in the wrong (or liable for the harm that has been inflicted on the plaintiff).
The standard of proof
The standard of proof is the degree or extent to which a case must be proven in court. In civil cases, the plaintiff must prove the case on the balance of probabilities. This means that the plaintiff must prove that they are most likely to be in the right, and the defendant is more likely to be in the wrong.
In civil disputes, there can be more than one plaintiff and more than one defendant.
Plaintiffs and defendants can be human beings, companies (which are separate legal entities from the directors and managers who run them), or other bodies such as government agencies.
Possible plaintiffs
The aggrieved party (i.e. the person who has suffered the loss).
Other victims (i.e. victims other than the aggrieved party).
Aggrieved party
The aggrieved party is the person whose rights have been infringed and who has suffered loss. For example, in a contract claim, the plaintiff is likely to be one of the parties to the contract who suffered loss because of a breach of contract
A class action
where seven or more people have claims against the same party, and those claims are in respect of, or arise out of, the same type of circumstances. The people who have the claims join together to form a ‘class’ and issue a proceeding against the party against whom they have a claim.
