a. Describe what is a Duty of Care
A duty of care is a persons’ responsibility to avoid acts that could be likely to cause harm to others. The onus is on the plaintiff to show that the defendant owes them a duty of care.
b. State the precedent case for duty of care
Donoghue vs Stevenson (1932) (the ‘neighbour principle’) is the benchmark case for duty of care.
Mrs Donoghue's friend had purchased her a bottle of ginger beer. After she had consumed the ginger beer she discovered a decomposing snail in the bottom of the bottle. She became ill. Donoghue took legal action against Stevenson, she couldn't sue for breach of contract because her friend purchased the ginger beer. The lawyers claimed Stevenson breached the contract because he owed a
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The product that was manufactured should be ‘fit for purpose’, so the ginger beer should have been drinkable without making the person drinking it sick.
The neighbour principle came about because Donoghue hadn’t purchased the drink, she had received the drink as a gift. She was a neighbour, not a party into the contract.
c. Research and briefly discuss 2 additional important examples of Duty of Care cases.
Grant vs Australian Knitting Mills (1933) is an important duty of care case.
The underwear was purchased and worn by Grant. At the end of the day Grant had itching at the ankles. Grant treated himself with calamine lotion, but it didn’t help he had scratched himself until he bled. Grant carried on wearing the underwear, he got much worse, and at this stage he saw a dermatologist who suggested he get rid of the underwear. Grant ended up in hospital bedridden for a long time. The action against Australian Knitting Mills was because the chemical in the cuffs or ankles caused dermatitis.
The judgement was negligence in manufacture, excess sulphites were left in the underwear. The manufacturer owed a Duty of Care to the purchasers of their underwear. The purchaser of the product will be able to be wear the underwear without injury to people or
Duty of care is a requirement to exercise a reasonable degree of attention and caution to avoid negligence which would lead others to harm. You need to be aware of the surrounds at all time and check if there are any hazards which could be harmful.
Duty of Care: best interest; defensible decision making; contextualising behaviour; identification of positive and negative risks
Duty of care is a legal obligation towards children and adults using services that are required to work in the best interest of the child or adult and also using care practice which is not detrimental to health well-being and safety of the child or adult. Duty of care also means carrying out practice only within the services own level of competence, role and responsibility.
Duty of care is a requirement that all health and social care professionals, and organisations providing health and care services, must put the interests of the people who use their service first. They also have to do everything in their power to keep people safe of any harm, neglect or risk. As an individual healthcare worker you owe a duty of care to your service users, your colleagues, your employer, yourself and the public interest. All duty of care is described I Code of Practice. Duty of care means that you must aim to provide high quality care to the best of your ability. If for any reason you can’t do this then you must say so. You must adhere to a standard of reasonable care and you are expected to:
Issue: One day, Kelly Mala went to Crown Bay Marina to buy some fuel for his boat, so he asked a Crown Bay Marina’s attendant to watch his boat while he purchased fuel. However, when he returned, mala saw his boat’s tank was overflowing and fuel was spilling into the boat and into the water. Then Mala began cleaning up the fuel, but as he pulled away from the marina, his boat’s engine caught fire and exploded. Mala was thrown into the water and severely burning. His boat was unsalvageable. Therefore, Kelly Mala sued Crown Bay Marina after his boat exploded.
To sum up, based on the law of negligence, the issues and precedents, Rebecca could win this case by legal process. Because the defendant ‘Zorba’s’ Restaurant owns a duty of care to Rebecca, the restaurant has breached that duty of care;
A duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeable harm others. A definition from Wikipedia
In certain situations, a duty of care is owed to another person. For example, a surgeon owes a duty of care to whoever they operate on. The existence of a duty of care is established by the Neighbour Test which was brought in by Lord Aitken after the Donoghue v Stevenson case;
A duty of care is a legal obligation to protect wellbeing and prevent harm within the health and social care sector. The duty of care is very important as it does not only protect the service users but the service provider’s as well. There are 7 principles all care workers must follow in order to care for the service users effectively. I will be investigating the quality of care given by service providers in both a child and adult health and social care settings. if the duty of care is not followed, implications can occur, for example it is a carers duty of care to report any signs of abuse they may notice on a patient, reporting this to higher authority etc could possibly save that service users life. Service users have rights to
Lord Atkin defined the duty of care when he gave judgement in the case of Donoghue v Stephenson (House of Lords 1932 relating to a case of a “snail” found in ginger beer sold to a customer” ). He said that:
Wikipedia describes “a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others”. I understand that a Duty of Care within my work role requires many things. Firstly, the children are placed into the environment by parents who want the best for their children. They expect they staff to have a degree of knowledge and understanding including education and training, to enable them to look after their children to the best of
‘“Occupier of the premises (defendant) owes the same duty of care, the common duty of care to all visitors”
Establishing whether not the current case is analogous to cases in which a duty of care already been determine. For instance the category of which duty of care has been held not to exist. The law justifies all these through the word responsibility. Everyone has a responsibility for their actions. This same word, responsibility, is also used to justify strict and vicarious liability. Parents, guardians, employers and other similar persons are responsible for their wards and employees. I think this is also a balancing of the scale. Due to circumstances such as incapacity in law of inability to pay, the injured party may be
The famous US decision of Riggs v Palmer serves to illustrate a considerable strength in Dworkin’s argument concerning rules and principles. The New York court had to decide a case to determine whether a grandson who poisoned his grandfather to obtain his inheritance was in fact able to collect such an inheritance. At the time, there existed no statute or law that invalidated his claim as a beneficiary due to his involvement in the murder. Furthermore, the applicable legal rule seemed to be that legacies contained in legally valid testamentary dispositions are to be guaranteed by law in accordance with the wishes of the testator. According to Hart, the court should, in this situation, be decided upon pre-existing law. Yet despite this, the court majority found that the grandson could not inherit, instead appealing to moral reasoning by citing the principle that no one should be able to profit from ones crimes. A similar decision based on principle was handed down 70 years later in the case of Henningsen v Bloomfield Motors Inc. As a result of these cases, Dworkin is able
“In the majority of cases that come before the courts, whether the defendant owes the plaintiff a duty of care can be determined from precedent created by earlier cases; for example manufacturers of goods owe a duty of care to consumers, motorist owe a duty of care to other road users, boat captains owe a duty of care to their passengers, teacher owe a duty of care to their students, occupier owe a duty of care to persons who come on to their property. . (Andy Gibson, Douglas Fraser, Business Law 5th edition, Pearson 2011 page No.165, 166 and 169).”