The Blip Blop Blog (Team Entity)

In Doughty v Turner Manufacturing Company (1964) the plaintiff was a worker in a factory who was standing too close to a cauldron. A piece of asbestos accidentally fell into the cauldron that was filled with molten liquid and the subsequent reaction, of the asbestos coming in contact with the molten liquid, resulted in an explosion and the plaintiff was injured. The plaintiff sued. The duty that was owed to the plaintiff was a duty that was owed by an employer to an employee and an employer had to take reasonable care and caution to ensure that the environment that the employee was working in was safe. In this instance, at the time of the accident, it was unknown, within the industry at least, that asbestos coming in contact with molten liquid would result in an explosion. The court held that the injury was too remote because the defendant could not have foreseen that the accident would produce the result that it did. In order to establish that the damage was not too remote,

Once the elements of duty, breach and causation are satisfied, the plaintiff has to establish that the type of damage that was incurred was foreseeable i.e. the damage was not too remote and it was the type of damage that a reasonable man would have in his contemplation or the type of damage that is the natural consequence of the defendant’s negligence. The test for remoteness in tort is the same as the test for remoteness in contract. In Re Polemis (1921) (Re Polemis & Furness Withy & Company Ltd. (1921)) one of the men employed to load and unload cargo from a ship dropped a plank into the ship’s cargo hold and the plank struck a flint which caused a spark that came in contact with petrol fumes and the resulting fire spread to the hull of the ship and set the whole ship on fire. The court had to decide as to the extent of the defendant’s liability. It was held that the defendant was not only liable for the damages that he could foresee but was also liable for all th

In AB v Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust (2004) three families brought an action for the removal of tissue and organs from the bodies of their deceased children without first obtaining the consent of the parents against the relevant authority. The tissue and the organs were removed after a post mortem and the parents only became aware of the details many years later. The parents sued. The court held that the removal of tissue and organs from the bodies of the children without informing the parents first or without obtaining their consent violated the duty health care professionals owed to parents. In Barber v Somerset County Council (2004) an aging teacher, aged 52 at the time, was employed by a school. The teacher was over burdened by the duties that were given to him and despite repeatedly requesting that the workload be shared, the school did not make the effort to delegate some of the teacher’s duties and as a result the teacher suffered from a breakdown and other relat

In Donachie v The Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police (2004) the plaintiff was an undercover police officer and he was assigned to attach a monitoring device on a car. The car was parked behind a public house and the device failed to transmit any signals the first time it was attached. The plaintiff subsequently had to try 9 times before he could get the device to work properly and each time he tried, the pressure kept mounting and he grew more and more weary, to the extent that he feared increasingly for his life with each step that he took. As a result of the stress that he was exposed to he developed a stress related illness and later had a stroke due to the illness. The plaintiff sued and he was successful. The court in line with the decision in Swinney v Chief Constable of Northumbria Police (1996) did not distinguish between an illness and a physical injury. It was sufficient that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care (similar to a duty of care o

In Farrell v Avon Health Authority (2001) the plaintiff was a father who’d been told that his newborn baby had died. Shocked by the news the father succumbed to a psychiatric illness. Soon afterwards he was told that the baby was alive and that the hospital had made a mistake. Regardless of the fact that he’d been told that the baby was well, the illness that he succumbed to exacerbated the other problems that he had namely drinking and drug addiction. The plaintiff sued. The court held that the father was a primary victim and the category of primary victim was broadened following the limitation set by Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire (1992) which defined a primary victim as someone who fears for his or her own safety and as a result suffers from nervous shock or succumbs to a psychiatric illness. Nevertheless, as per the decision in McLoughlin v O'Brian (1983) the father was entitled to claim. Any parent who succumbs to nervous shock either as a result of wi

In Phelps v Hillingdon London Borough Council (2000) the plaintiff was a young student who suffered from dyslexia (a condition that makes learning difficult). The plaintiff was not performing up to the expected level in school and with the help of the local authority an educational psychologist was enlisted to determine the causes of the plaintiff’s learning difficulties. The psychologist failed to pick up that the plaintiff suffered from dyslexia and as a result the plaintiff suffered from much emotional distress. The plaintiff sued and was successful. There is a duty owed by the relevant authorities to ensure that children with learning difficulties are given the help that they needed and that help would have been possible and forthcoming if the cause of the child’s learning difficulty had been identified. Addressing these problems at an early stage could make the difference between a child achieving his or her full potential or falling short of what he or she could become.

In Griffiths v Brown and Lindsay (1999) a taxi driver dropped a drunk passenger off close to his destination, by a pedestrian crossing, seated in an upright position. An action was brought against the taxi driver because there was a risk, given the state he was in, that something undesirable may happen. The question before the courts was whether there was a duty owed by the taxi driver to his passenger. The court held that a duty only existed for as long as the passenger remained in the car and the duty would be that of a reasonable and competent driver. The duty ended when the passenger got out of the car and the duty could not be extended beyond that. Passengers in a taxi or a cab have a tendency to change their minds during the trip and they can hop off at any point or place, along the way, that they choose to or desire. It is impossible to impose a duty on a taxi driver or to compel him or her to take the passenger to his or her destination or the destination that was a

In Barrett (AP) v Enfield London Borough Council (1999) the plaintiff was placed in foster care and as a result he suffered from a psychological illness and turned out to be an alcoholic. The plaintiff sued the council for placing him in foster care on the grounds that he may have turned out to be a better person and may not have suffered from a psychological illness had he not been placed in foster care. The foster care system is not without its faults and it is different from adoption. Under the system children are normally placed by the authorities concerned in the care of carers, groups homes or in the care of care-givers and in the past the system has attracted its fair share of criticism. The question that is to be asked here is should the council be held responsible if the child is placed in the care of a family or a group home that isn’t quite suited to play the role of foster parents? The answer is yes and the plaintiff was successful. The council owed a duty of ca

White v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire (1998) is a follow on from Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire (1992) and it is with regards to the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster. While in Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire (1992) the claimants were the relatives of those who had died and spectators, the claimants in White v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire (1998) were the police officers who were on duty at the stadium on the particular day. The case is complicated because the disaster is generally perceived to have resulted from the negligence of the police and while there is a duty of care which is similar to the duty of care in an employer-employee relationship we have to take into account the fact that relatives of those who had died and spectators were denied compensation because of the floodgates argument. The chances are that the officers on duty did suffer from some form of psychiatric illness, as did the spectators and the relatives of those who

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