GDL Law Notes GDL Tort Law Notes
A collection of the best GDL notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through applications from top students and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor". In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of GDL notes available in the UK this year. This collection of GDL notes is fully updated for recent exams, also making them the most up-to-date GDL study materials ...
The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our GDL Tort Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
_______________________________________________________
Negligence = breach of a duty of care which leads to damage which is not too remote
Establishing a duty of care
Lunney & Oliphant: no thought given to general principles unifying negligence early on
Donoghue v Stevenson
Snail in the opaque bottle served to a customer who then experienced personal injury
Held: birth of the neighbour principle
Lord Atkin “reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour…persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation”
The neighbour principle is thus:
Lack of reasonable care
To avoid reasonably foreseeably harm
To a neighbour
Dorset Yacht
Borstal boys stole C’s boat & caused damage to other boats in the harbour through the lack of reasonable care of the borstal officers
Held: in spite of policy arguments against the finding of liability, this could not amount to immunity. Liability was found for the property owners in the immediate vicinity as their loss was reasonably foreseeable, whereas people further afield would be out of the remit
This expands the conditions of liability
Anns v Merton LBC
Structural defects in a block of flats inspected by D
Held: (HL) D did owe a duty of care to ensure foundations were of correct depth
The two-stage test per Lord Wilberforce:
Do the parties satisfy the neighbour test? (lack of reasonable care to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm & neighbour relationship)
Prima facie duty of care unless there are policy considerations which negative it
This led to a massive expansion of liability
Brennan J in an Austalian case: preferable to “develop novel categories of negligence incrementally”
Lord Keith: very anti presumption of a duty – should be on a case by case basis and whether it is “just and reasonable” to do so
Caparo v Dickman
Acquisition relying on accounts which miscalculated profits by auditors not for the purpose of investors
Held: no duty of care owned as there was no sufficient proximity between the auditors & Caparo – they didn’t know he existed nor was it the purpose of their accounts to provide information to investors
Lord Bridge: foreseeability of damage; relationship of proximity; fair just and reasonable to impose a duty
Establishes the three-stage test which is good law today:
Reasonably foreseeable damage
Sufficient proximity
Fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty
Reasonable foreseeability
AG for the British Virgin Islands v Hartwell
Supervised police officer given access to gun as part of employment. Then shot at his girlfriend & tourists in a restaurant. Action brought against police
Held: duty of care owed where police entrust officers with guns.
Lord Nicholls “the wide reach of the duty is proportionate to the gravity of the risks”
NB: this shows breadth of foreseeability; the actual type of harm & the potential victims would have been unknown to the supervising police officers
Suggests the more serious the potential harm, the less strict the rules of duty imposition
Proximity
Factors inclined towards a finding of proximity:
Personal/economic relationship:
Osman v Ferguson
Police investigating inappropriate relationship between teacher & child
Held: duty of care owed as harm was reasonably foreseeable & proximate relationship between child & police force – however decided following Hill that there was an immunity to police forces
Everett v Comojo
Waitress assaulted by club-goers at a nightclub
Held: duty of care established as there was proximity (through economic relationship) & foreseeability, however here there was no breach as they had not fallen below the reasonable standard of care in all the circumstances (upmarket club)
Assumption of responsibility:
Kent v Griffiths
Ambulance accepted call but major delay meant asthma attack put her into respiratory arrest
Held: “the acceptance of the call in this case established the duty of care” per Lord Woolf
Vowles v Evans
Referee for Welsh rugby union sued by player
Held: duty of care through assumption of responsibility
Henderson v Merrett
Liability of underwriters to members of a syndicate in mismanagement of investment
Held: the foreseeability of the harm could extend liability to unproximate third parties. A contractual assumption of responsibility, when relied on, may give birth to a tortious liability, unless it is successfully excluded by the contract (per Lord Goff)
Type of harm: proximity will not be found readily where the type of harm has been restricted from compensation
See: pure economic loss
See: psychiatric harm
If the potential class of claimants is closed or open (open classes will be viewed as less proximate)
Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire
Mother of the Yorkshire Ripper claiming against police for their lack of reasonable care in investigating
Held: no duty of care owed (policy reasons as well as proximity grounds)
However the finding of proximity may also reflect the court’s discretion to impose duties in situations where they feel it would be beneficial:
D Howarth: the elasticity of the ‘proximity’ ground
Stevenson J “proximity expresses a conclusion, a judgment, a result, rather than a principle”
Lord Oliver in Alcock “what the law should be” influences perception of proximity
Fair, just & reasonable
Relevant policy factors:
Floodgates (Hill, Alcock, D v East Berkshire NHS)
Insurance position of the defendant
Does D act for the collective welfare?
The Nicholas H
Negligent ship survey by the classification society
Held: no duty of care as they were only a subsidiary responsibility & it wouldn’t be fair to impose a duty on all classification societies
Reeman v Department of Transport established the same reasoning for Dept of Transport performing same function
Selwood v Durham
NHS trust...
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our GDL Tort Law Notes.
A collection of the best GDL notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through applications from top students and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor". In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of GDL notes available in the UK this year. This collection of GDL notes is fully updated for recent exams, also making them the most up-to-date GDL study materials ...
Ask questions 🙋 Get answers 📔 It's simple 👁️👄👁️
Our AI is educated by the highest scoring students across all subjects and schools. Join hundreds of your peers today.
Get Started