Duty of care and Breach

The first step to establish negligence is to decide whether the defendant owe a duty of care to the plaintiff. The defendant is obliged to take reasonable care to its neighbor. Neighbors are persons who are so closely and directly affected by ma act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question: Donoghue v Stevenson. Thus, the damages occurred must be reasonably foreseeable. In this case, MHRC and James are neighbors since they are service provider and customer. Service providers including professional service providers generally owe a duty to take reasonable care not to cause foreseeable injury in providing the service. Professional duty of care to clients of MHRC is expected. Thus, MHRC owed a duty of care to James. Furthermore, in this case, Sonic Products Australia Ltd and James are Distributors and customer relationship. Distributors including retailers owe a duty to those persons whom they should have foreseen could be injured if they failed to take reasonable care. Sonic Products Australia Ltd owed a duty of care to ensure that the laser machines imported are not defective. Thus, Sonic owed a duty of care to James.
The second step to establish negligence is to determine whether the defendant fail to exercise the required standard of care. To decide whether the defendant exercise the required standard of care, it needs to be determined whether a reasonable person in the defendant’s position would have taken those precautions. Weighing test in Wyong Shire Council v Shirt: this involves consideration of the magnitude of the risk and the degree of the probability of its occurrence, along with the expense and difficulty of taking alleviating action. Penelope as an employee of MHRC, she owed reasonable care to James. In this case, although the chance of the occurrence of the accident was little, but once happened, the consequence was very serious. In