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A Duty Fixed By Civil Law

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It has long been established that a tort occurs “where there is breach of a general duty fixed by civil law”. The branch of law we know as negligence has been in development since the establishment of a duty of care for one’s neighbour in Donoghue v Stevenson . In that case, Lord Atkin laid down general principles whereby a person would owe another a duty of care, the most important being “you must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour” . This principle has been refined on a number of occasions and the current approach for establishing a duty of care is typified in Caparo Industries plc v Dickman . Following Donoghue, a variety of cases came before the …show more content…

“those where a claimant has suffered financial damage but has incurred no personal injury or damage to property” . It is arguable that other losses which result from tort could possibly be described as economic loss; however, the true definition of economic loss involves someone who has suffered financial damage that does not result from personal injury or damage to property. In Spartan Steel & Alloys Ltd v Martin & Co (Contractors) Ltd , the defendants were negligent in cutting an electric cable, which then resulted in a 14 hour power cut in the area. This affected a number of properties including the claimant’s factory. With no power available to heat the claimant’s furnace in his factory, the metal there solidified and was ruined. The claimant was also required to shut his factory temporarily. Civil litigation was initiated by the claimant for damage to ruined metal (which constituted physical damage to property), loss of the profit that would have been made had that metal been sold (labelled as economic loss arising from damage to property) and loss of profit the factory would have made had it not been forced to close (pure economic loss). A majority of the Court of Appeal held that only the first two heads of claim were recoverable. The defendant owed a duty of care to the claimant not to damage their property but no duty of care was owed with regard to loss of profit. It was found that it was

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