Negligence in Tort Law

Four questions, in order

Negligence in tort is not a synonym for carelessness in the air. It is a civil wrong with a structure: a duty of care, a breach of that duty, a causal connection between the breach and the harm, and damage recognised by the law. Miss one and the claim, as negligence, fails. The wider subject is the . The method for any case you add is . This note names one foreign case as a starting point and refuses to invent an Indian citation you would then memorise unchecked.

Donoghue v Stevenson is a decision associated with the neighbour principle: a person should take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which they can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure a neighbour, meaning someone so closely and directly affected that they ought to have been in contemplation. That is a persuasive common-law starting point. It is not an Indian Act, and it is not the last word an Indian court has spoken. If your syllabus assigns an Indian case, open that case. Do not cite it from this sentence, because this sentence does not pretend to report it.

Duty, then breach, then the link to harm

Duty is the legal question of whether the defendant had to take care toward this claimant. Foreseeability is part of the conversation. It is not the whole conversation in every jurisdiction's later cases. Write "duty" only after you say why these two people are in that relationship. A stranger on a distant road and a manufacturer of a product are not the same diagram. Breach asks whether the defendant's conduct fell below the care the duty required. The standard is reasonableness in the circumstances, not perfection and not hindsight dressed as foresight. Causation asks whether the breach caused the damage in the sense the law uses, including whether the damage was too remote. Damage asks whether the law treats this harm as recoverable in negligence. Upset, without more, is not a number and may not be the damage the tort requires. This page states no rupees.

What Donoghue does not decide for you

The snail-in-the-bottle story is a teaching picture of a duty to a consumer who did not buy directly from the manufacturer. Your problem may have no bottle and no manufacturer. Do not force the picture. Use the principle at the level of foreseeability and proximity, then do the element list with your facts. means finding the case your teacher named, not repeating the snail. If you cannot find the report, you still may explain the principle as a starting point and say you have not opened a later Indian authority.

Contract and crime are other lists

Careless performance of a contract can raise a contract claim, discussed in , and sometimes a tort, depending on the duty. Do not merge them into "negligent breach" as a single invented tort. A rash act might also be a crime if the criminal law's elements are met. That is , with its own code. The same facts can be discussed in more than one paragraph. They should not be discussed as one undifferentiated wrong.

Defences and a modest ending

Contributory negligence and voluntary assumption of risk are defences or limiting ideas your course will name. Use them when the facts show the claimant's own conduct. Do not use them to blame a claimant who merely existed. End a student answer with which elements are present and which are missing. Do not end with a compensation award. Do not end with "the neighbour principle means the defendant always pays." Always is the word that makes the principle false.

A hypothetical about a foresight slogan

Hypothetical. A cyclist is injured by a shop sign that falls. The student writes "Donoghue, so the shop pays." There is no analysis of who put the sign up, whether a duty was owed to a passer-by, whether inspection was reasonable, or whether the fall caused this injury rather than an earlier fall.

The rewrite asks the four questions in order and answers each with a fact or with "the problem does not say." Donoghue is mentioned once, as a persuasive starting point for duty, not as an Indian section and not as a damages table. The shop may or may not be liable. The note is allowed to stop in uncertainty when the facts stop.

A checklist for a negligence problem

Keep the order. 1. Identify the claimant and the defendant. 2. Ask whether a duty of care is arguable, and why. 3. Ask whether conduct fell below reasonable care. 4. Ask whether that failure caused the harm complained of. 5. Ask whether the harm is damage the tort recognises. 6. Only then consider a defence the facts raise. 7. Cite Donoghue as a common-law starting point, cite an Indian case only after you open it, and invent no sum of money.

If you cannot separate step 2 from step 4, you are using "negligence" as a mood. Go back to the list.

Elements, not a payout

Kanoons Academy does not currently list a separate LAWCET, CLAT, or AP LAWCET batch in the catalogue; these notes are study material, and counselling is via . The nearest catalogue course is . That course teaches how to read an Act, a rule, and a judgment note. It will not value an injury. The button uses the course's name.

Ask the four questions. Leave the award to a court that has evidence.