Law - Tort of Negligence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Law - Tort of Negligence - Essay Example Before then, the courts studied the circumstances of the case and so if there was precedent and decided, based on all these, if the plaintiff was entitled to redress. Tort of negligence There was no set rule defining what negligence was. It was in the case of Donoghue vs. Stevenson where negligence as a rule first arose (Oliphant,2005. P. 325). In this case the plaintiff’s friend offered her a ginger beer that was manufactured by the defendants. The drink was contained in an opaque bottle. She poured some of the beer and drank it. When she poured some more, she discovered that the drink had contained a decomposed snail. She then became sick because of the disgust from the thought that she had been drinking the remains of the decomposed snail. She sued the manufacturers. The defendants argued that if they had a contract, it was between them and the plaintiff’s friend, who was in fact the one who bought the drink. They therefore didn’t have a contract with the plai ntiff and didn’t even know her. So they had no liability. From the courts arguments in this case, three major points came out- Contract fallacy: The court agreed that one doesn’t need to have contractual relations with someone else in order to be liable to that person. This point shot down the defendants’ argument. ... who are in my contemplation when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions in question.† This point showed that the defendant did indeed owe the plaintiff a duty of care. The principle of product liability: This principle states that the manufacturer of a defective product is liable to the ultimate consumer who receives that product. This principle has since then evolved and gone on to serve new purposes. This case went up to the House of Lords and they agreed that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care. The factors of whether there was a breach of that duty and whether damage occurred were not brought up in this case because the defendants feared the bad publicity that the case had brought and decided to settle it with the plaintiff outside the court. The court decided that there were three main ingredients to the tort of negligence: The defendant must owe a duty of care to the plaintiff there must be a breach of that duty, and the breach must result in damage. Breach of duty to take care Thus the first thing that the cricket club ought to ask itself was whether the Brunel owed it a duty of care. From there the cricket club must establish whether Brunel breached the duty of care. This comes about where the defendant failed to take reasonable care. Reasonableness may vary with circumstances e.g. if someone is handling a box of sweets, the reasonable care required may be much less than that which is required while handling a box of explosives. The case of Blyth vs. Birmingham Waterworks Co. further expounded on this Alderson B. in this case described negligence as â€Å"omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which generally or ordinarily regulate human affairs will do, or doing something which a reasonable man