The Tort of Negligence

There are three elements that must be present for an act or omission

to be negligent; (1) The defendant owed a duty of care towards the

plaintiff; (2) The defendant breached the duty of care by an act or

omission; (3) The plaintiff must suffer damage as a result - be it

physical, emotional or financial.

The court might decide that Freddy (the plaintiff) was owed a duty of

care by Elvis (the defendant) if they find that what happened to

Freddy was in the realm of reasonable forseeability - any harm that

could be caused to a 'neighbour' by Elvis' actions that he could

reasonably have expected to happen. The 'neighbour principle' was

established in the case of Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932). Donoghue was

bought a ginger beer by her friend from an ice-cream parlour. She

discovered a partially decomposed snail inside the opaque bottle. She

claimed that she suffered from gastro-enteritis and nervous shock as a

result, and sued the manufacturer. She could not sue for breach of

contract (the contract being that the manufacturer would provide the

consumer with products that would not harm her) because her friend had

purchased it for her, so she sued for negligence. Lord Atkinson, who

was the judge at the trial, said the case hinged on the question, do

the manufacturers owe the consumer, as well as the buyer (the

parlour), a duty of care? Is the plaintiff the defendant's

'neighbour', to whom the plaintiff owed a duty of care? Lord Atkinson

said that a neighbour is anyone that you might closely and directly

affect by your actions. So it was established that the manufacturer

did owe a duty of care to Mrs. Donoghue, in that it was up to them to...

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...nted to sack an employee but had no

good reason, then they could stage an 'accident' which pointed to the

negligence of the employee, giving them an excuse to fire them and

avoid an unfair dismissal action. The action would obviously be

dropped once the offending employee was removed. Secondly, although

the employee is supposedly an extension of the employer, can the

employer really be held responsible for the actions of another person

with free will? What if the employee started well in his/her duties,

but quickly became lax in performing their job, and then committing a

tort. Admittedly, they should really have been supervised better, but

if the transformation was rapid (perhaps due to a death in the

employee's family) then there really wasn't much that the employer

could have done to make sure that it didn't happen.