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Independent Tort of Negligence

Negligence is an independent tort that refers to a breach of duty by one person to another through an unintended act or omission. To prove negligence, a claimant must show that the defendant owed a duty of care, breached that duty through an act or omission below the standard of reasonable care, and caused damage to the claimant that was a foreseeable result of the breach. The modern law of negligence largely stems from the Donoghue v. Stevenson case, where the manufacturer was found liable for a customer's illness caused by a decomposed snail in ginger beer.

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Danish Ahmad Qadri
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65 views1 page

Independent Tort of Negligence

Negligence is an independent tort that refers to a breach of duty by one person to another through an unintended act or omission. To prove negligence, a claimant must show that the defendant owed a duty of care, breached that duty through an act or omission below the standard of reasonable care, and caused damage to the claimant that was a foreseeable result of the breach. The modern law of negligence largely stems from the Donoghue v. Stevenson case, where the manufacturer was found liable for a customer's illness caused by a decomposed snail in ginger beer.

Uploaded by

Danish Ahmad Qadri
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Independent tort of negligence (act-omission) Negligence- doing something which a reasonable man would not do or vice versa.

Negligence is a kind of tort or civil wrong which refers to a breach of duty by one person to another or an act done unintentionally. Negligence is an independent and specific tort and also may be a factor or ingredient in another tort. To succeed in an action for Negligence, the claimant must prove the three ingredients namely, Duty of Care - the defendant must have owed a duty of care to the plaintiff either at Common Law or Statute; Breach - the defendant must have broken the duty of care by an act or omission which fell below the standard of care that was required of him or her; Damage - the plaintiff must have suffered damage which was caused by the defendant's breach of the duty of care that was of a type that was a foreseeable result from such breach.

The development of modern law of negligence owes much to the decision of the Donoghue v. Stevenson case. Mrs. Donoghue had consumed part of a ginger beer containing a decomposed snail while in a public bar. She sued the manufacturer of the drink, Mr. Stevenson, for her consequent illness. The House of Lords in its decision held that though Mrs. Donoghue, the victim had a valid claim, such a claim should not exist and thus it should be treated as a new product liability case. It was further held that there should be liability for negligent act and the law should recognize the principle that every person owes a duty of reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions, which can be reasonably foreseen as likely to injure his neighbor.

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