The Blip Blop Blog (Team Entity)

Barley is a cereal crop (crops that are classified as grass or crops that belong to the grass family and are grown for their seeds) and it is the fourth most grown cereal crop in the world. Other cereal crops include rice, wheat, corn, millet, sorghum, oat and rye. The barley seed looks somewhat like wheat but it has a longer beard (the bristles that protect the kernel) and it is best described, like many of the other cereal crop seeds, as small, white and longish. Barley originated or was first grown as a crop, in the Fertile Crescent (an area incorporating Mesopotamia and the Levant) and was domesticated approximately 10,000 years ago. It is the oldest domesticated cereal crop in the world. Barley was initially used to make bread and porridge and later became a commodity that was bartered and traded. It was more popular in West Asia and North Africa than in Europe where it was generically referred to as corn which in ancient times also included other cereal crops like rice

Copyright © 2019 by Kathiresan Ramachanderam

In Sutherland Shire Council v Heyman (1985) the council approved the plans to construct a house on a slope, subject to the conditions that the council be given notice at proper intervals and that no tenants should be allowed to occupy the house until the council had inspected the house. A few years after the construction of the house, the plaintiffs purchased the house and once they’d moved in they realized that there was structural damage to the house caused by the inadequate depths of the foundations and the plaintiffs incurred expenses in remedying the damage to the house. The plaintiffs sued the council for failing to carry out their duties diligently. The facts in the case were similar to the facts in Anns v Merton London Borough Council (1978). It was held that the council did not owe the plaintiffs a duty of care and therefore the plaintiffs were unsuccessful. The council’s powers of inspection were discretionary because there was no statutory duty imposed on the council to

In Bourhill v Young (1943) - the case concerns someone who’d witnessed a horrific accident. The plaintiff was a pregnant fishwife, and as she got off the tram, a motorcyclist, the defendant, flashed past her and hit a car and as a result the motorcyclist died. The plaintiff did not witness the accident but heard the sound of the crash and minutes later witnessed the aftermath. The body had been removed from the scene of the accident, by the time the plaintiff got there, but there were pools of blood on the ground. The plaintiff went into shock and her baby was stillborn. The plaintiff brought an action against the defendant’s estate. It was held that the defendant did not owe the plaintiff a duty of care. The defendant could not have foreseen that a pedestrian would be affected in the manner that the plaintiff was and to make the defendant liable would be to stretch the scope of liability too far. In Home Office v Dorset Yacht Co Ltd (1970) a group of boys from a borstal school, a type

In Dulieu v White (1901) the plaintiff was sitting at the bar in a public house that belonged to her husband, she was pregnant at the time, when a horse and cart crashed into the establishment. The plaintiff suffered from severe shock that resulted from her being on the premises at the time the defendant crashed into it and she subsequently fell severely ill. She gave birth to a premature baby 9 days later and the child as he or she grew up did not display the level of intelligence that other children his or her age would display and the plaintiff argued that the child’s premature birth and the subsequent inability to cope was the result of the shock and the serious illness that she had suffered as a result of being in the public house at the time of the incident. The plaintiff sued. The court held that the defendant had a duty of care not to frighten the plaintiff by his actions and if the resultant injury is not too remote than the plaintiff can claim. However, mere fright alone will

The modern precept of the duty of care principle was enunciated by Lord Atkins in the landmark case of Donoghue v Stevenson (1932). In the case the plaintiff fell ill after consuming a bottle of ginger-beer purchased on her behalf, that was bottled in an opaque glass bottle and the type of bottle that was used in bottling the ginger-beer prevented the plaintiff from being able to see the contents of the bottle with any amount of clarity or certainty and therefore even if the plaintiff had taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the contents of the bottle was untainted or uncontaminated she would have been unable to do so without purchasing or acquiring the bottle. Even if the plaintiff had purchased or acquired the bottle and had opened it, whether the contaminant would have been visible or would have been apparent was dependent on the type or nature of the contaminant and some contaminants may be plainly visible and others may not and some may be afloat at the top of the bottle whil

The doctrine of privity of contract and the capacity of a party to enter into a contract can often get in the way and prevent a party from bringing an action in contract. Let us say for example that a friend buys his or her friend a bottled drink which is contaminated and as a result the friend falls ill and has to incur medical costs in addition to taking days off work. The aggrieved party or the innocent party does not have an action in contract because he or she is not privy to the contract but he or she may have an action in negligence. Without taking into account privity or capacity an innocent party may also want to commence an action in negligence if the facts allow it because the courts are more lenient when awarding damages in tort than they are in contract. In order for an action to be successful in negligence the plaintiff must satisfy the following criteria: - i) Duty: - the plaintiff must prove that the defendant owed him or her a duty of care ii) Breach: - the def