Tort Law: Adam and Callum

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In tort law there is negligence and within this there is the duty of

care element, which helps to decide if compensation should be

emplaced. The concept of negligence is a difficult one and has been

broken into three separate parts:

· Duty of care owed by the defendant to the claimant

· Breach of that duty of care

· Damage caused to the claimant as a result of the defendant's breach

in duty of care.

All three parts have to be present before negligence can be proved.

One requirement for proving the tort of negligence is that a duty of

care exists between the claimant and the defendant.

In past cases a decision on whether a duty of care was present in a

case was decided within the duty of care "neighbour test" which was

created by Lord Atkins this was if by using common sense the defendant

could see that an action or omission could lead to the harm of another

person, then a duty of care would be present. However this theory was

updated and modernised into the three-part test, which consists of

three questions. Firstly was the damage foreseeable? Was there

sufficient proximity between the claimant and defendant? And finally

is it fair and just to create a duty of care between the claimant and

defendant?

When looking at the case given I have decided to use the three- part

test to show whether Adam owed a duty of care to Callum.

Firstly was the damage foreseeable?

Adam knew that the substances and equipment he was using on the garden

were dangerous and had already verbally warned Callum to keep away

from the area to prevent injury. Adam then left the treated area

unattended and open for anybody to walk on. Which resulted in Callum

being severely burned by the chemicals. The question that the law

would ask is did the defendant use common sense? I feel the answer to

this question is no because he should have taken more severe actions

to make sure that the safety of the child and others was maintained,

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