Bourhill V Young Case Summary

Bourhill v Young (1943) AC 92 is a Scottish delict case which emphasize on how extensive an individual duty to ensure others are not harmed by their actions or activities, this case has established on how the scope of recovery for bystanders or who are uninvolved with physical harm. This case centers around an incident where Mrs Bourhill claimed that she suffered shock due to the fact that Mr young had a collision with a car around 50 ft away from her while she was exiting a tram car. To be exact, this case took place on the 11 October 1938 where Mr Young was negligently riding his motorcycle along the road, and happen to have a collision with a car fatally injuring him, Mrs Bourhill was leaving a tram car while the collision took place.

The law of tort applies duties of the civil law in respect to a wide range of behavior which are relevant to a business activity, this area of law serves a very important role for consumers and those are doing business with them. As stated above in order to have a sure fire claim when claiming under the tort of negligence it is compulsory to fulfill the three requirement, the first requirement is the " duty of care " it is stated that whether the defendant owes the plaintiff a duty of care, is definitely a question of the law. it is always onus that the plaintiff establish the existence of a duty of care, but usually in most cases it is very straightforward to establish a duty of care, as long as it is provided that the relationship between parties falls within the duty of care for example a doctors owes a duty of care to his/her patients, or motorist owe a duty of care to the other road users, even architects owe a duty of care to the people who are occupying the specific building, these are just few examples of owing a duty of care. if the relationship between the parties does not fall within the established duties of care, than the plaintiff needs to be able to show the 2 things which are (1) '' it was reasonably foreseeable that the defendant act or omission could cause harm to someone in the plaintiff's position ", which means that it the plaintiff must be able to show that during the time of the incident it was reasonably foreseeable that the defendant's code of conduct could cause harm to someone in the plaintiff's position. (2) ''the salient features of the case are consistent with the existence of a duty of care'', which also means that it must be reasonably that the defendant's code of conduct was most likely to cause harm to the plaintiff, the plaintiff must also be able to prove that the salient features of the case is consistent with the existence of the duty of care. This will