Negligence and Duty of Care

Negligence is essentially concerned with compensating people who have suffered damage as a result of the carelessness of others .One of the main ways in which access to compensation is restricted is through the doctrine of the duty of care.Essentially,this is a legal concept which dictates the circumstances in which one party will be liable to another in negligence.Breach of a duty of care essentially means that the defendant has fallen below the standard of behavior expected in someone undertaking the activity concerned ,so for example, driving carelessly is a breach of the duty owed to the road users,while bad medical treatment may be breach of the duty owed by doctors to patients.In each case,the standard of care which could be expected from a reasonable person.This means that it is irrelevant that the defendant’s conduct seemed to be fine to them; it must meet a general standard of reasonableness.Not all careless conduct which causes damage will give rise to an action because to be liable in negligence,there must be a duty to take care and breach of that duty by the defendant causing damage to the claimant as illustrated in Lochgelly Iron Co. v McMullan. The elements of negligence are duty of care,breach of care,causation and that the damage is not too remote.There have been developments to the standard of care in the tort of negligence in recent years to encourage people to take care and discourage actions likely to endanger others. As the test is objective,the particular defendant’s own characteristics are usually ignored.A striking example of this is that the standard of care required of a driver is that of a reasonable driver,with no account taken of whether the driver has been driving for 20 years or 20 minutes,or even is a learner driver.In Nettleship v Weston(1971)the claimant was a driving instructor,and the defendant his pupil.On her third lesson,she drove into a lamp post and the claimant was injured.The court held that she was