Breach Of Duty Of Care

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1. Duty Of Care The thing the court must do is identify if the defendant owed a duty of care to plaintiff and what the duty of care owed was. They will try and distinguish what the standard of reasonable care the hospital should have adhered to while they were treating plaintiff and if the harm caused to plaintiff could have been foreseeably cause harm to her. 2. Breach Of Duty Of Care Once the court have established the duty of care the defendant owed to plaintiff, they will then consider whether the defendant failed to obtain the reasonable standard of care that was owed to plaintiff. They will decide this based on the actions a reasonable man would have taking. A reasonable man is defined as a man who is careful or of ordinary prudence, …show more content…

• The probability of the accident How likely is the accident to take place? If the accident is unlikely to take place and there is only a slight risk of it happening then this may not be foreseeably to a reasonable man. A case in which this is present is ‘O’Gorman V Ritz(Clonmel) Ltd (1947)’, A man went to the cinema and got his leg caught on a hinge inside, over 1 million people had been in the cinema and this had never occurred, therefore the court ruled that the accident was very unlikely and not reasonably foreseeable and the defendant was that held accountable. (E-lawresources.co.uk, 2015) • Gravity of threatened injury The more serious the possible injury is the greater the precaution that should be taken. If the danger and possible damages to the plaintiff was severe than the defendant should have taken even greater precautions to make sure that the defendant did not sustain these …show more content…

Allen was staying in Trabolgan Holiday Centre since she was a paying customer, she was owed a standard of reasonable care against foreseeable harm. One evening walking back to her room she slipped on a wet path and injured her leg. It was foreseeable that someone may slip on the wet path and a reasonable man would have tried to clean up the wetness and if this was not possible somehow alert people to the danger e.g. Wet floor sign, this means it was breach of duty of care by the holiday