"Negligence" - Business & Cmpany Law

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Negligence - Business and Company law

Question:  “Negligence is an ever expanding area of law”. Discuss making reference to case law.

Negligence is a tort and an element of tort; it is the most important ever expanding area of law.  Negligence can be described as a tort involving the branch of legal duty of care causing loss by a failure to the party to whom the duty is owed.  So what is a tort? A tort is simply a civil wrong, “the law of tort is concerned with a description of those instances of conduct which the court primarily have rules should be prohibited and penalised” (IPA text, 2002).  Tort is based on faults, most torts are committed by carelessness (negligence) rather than intentionally there can however be liability for an omission.

The is no definite definition for the law of negligence this is part of the reason for its ever increasing nature,  For example if  a person unintentionally but negligibly commit a wrongful act to another(plaintiff) which cause a form of loss to the plaintiff, the person (defendant) will be held at fault in the court and the remedy will be damages.  

There are four important elements of negligence a plaintiff has to prove to succeed in an action of negligence:

  1.  The Plaintiff  must prove the defendant owe him a duty of care
  2.  The Plaintiff  must prove that there was a breach of duty of care by the defendant
  3.  The Plaintiff  must Prove that he suffer injury, damage and loss
  4.  The Plaintiff must prove that the damage and loss suffered is as a result of the alleged breach of the duty of care by the defendant.
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The law of Negligence can be seen to be expanding in life daily activities, law of negligence is expanding to areas such as supplying of services (Breach of duty of care), professional negligence (e.g. medical negligent case), health and safety, standard of care, duty of care involving third parties, occupiers liability, product liability, economic loss, nervous shock, civil liability and much more.  A duty of care was originally established by applying LORD Atkins’s “Neighbour” Test From: Donoghue V Stevenson (1932) in this case, a woman became ill after dinking a an opaque bottle of ginger beer.  The woman sued ...

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