Summary Duty of Care- Acts

Chapter 6: Duty of care- acts

6.1 The basics:

 Chapter focuses where D has performed a positive act that has resulted in the claimant
suffering some kind of harm.
 Claimant has to show that D breached a duty of care that was geared towards protecting her
from the harm, for which she wants to sue the D. has to be a link.
 A lot harder to establish that a D owed a claimant a duty of care that was geared towards
protecting her from suffering pure economic loss than it is to establish that a D owed the
claimant a duty of care that was geared towards protecting her from suffering physical
injury.
 Physical harm-> has to establish that it was reasonably foreseeable that the D’s actions
would result in the C’s suffering some kind of physical injury.
 Property damage-> has to establish that it was reasonably foreseeable that the D’s actions
would result in property being damaged and the C had a sufficient interest in the property at
the time it was damaged as a result of the D’s actions.
 Psychiatric illness-> has to establish that it was reasonably foreseeable that the D’s actions
would result in the C suffering some form of psychiatric illness and there was a sufficient
degree of proximity between the D’s actions and the C’s suffering the illness.
 Pure economic loss-> has to establish that there was a special relationship between the D
and the C, or special circumstances that would make it ‘fair, just and reasonable’ to find that
the D owed the C a duty of care geared protecting the C from suffering some kind of pure
economic loss.
 Pure distress.
 Easier to prove property damage than psychiatric illness.
 McLoughlin v O’Brian [1983] -> Lord Scarman was in favour of the courts simply finding such
a duty of care whenever it was reasonably foreseeable that a D’s actions would result in C
suffering psychiatric illness.
 Page v Smith [1996] -> D carelessly ran into the C’s car while the claimant was sitting in it. C
was uninjured but the experience caused him to suffer a renewed onset of CFS (previously
suffering with this but managed to overcome). C sued the D in negligence for compensation
for his CFS (psychiatric illness). HL held it was unnecessary for the claimant to have to show
that the D breached a duty of care that was geared towards protecting the claimant from
suffering a psychiatric illness. It was enough if the claimant could establish that his
psychiatric illness resulted from the D’s breaching a duty of care that was geared towards
protecting the claimant from suffering a physical injury. C was able to satisfy the condition. D
owed C a duty of care not to crash into the C’s car based on the fact that it was reasonably
foreseeable that doing so would result in the claimant suffering some kind of physical injury.
 Page= unorthodox in that it allows a claimant to sue for one kind of harm based on the
breach of duty of care geared towards protecting the claimant from suffering another kind
of harm.
 Rothwell v Chemical & Insulating Co Ltd [2007] -> HL sought to limit Page.
 Page didn’t apply to Coleman v British Gas [2002]
 Page-> has to be an immediate psychiatric illness as consequence of D’s actions.
 How to determine whether it was reasonably foreseeable that a D’s actions would result in a
claimant suffering some kind of kind of harm?