Liability for Negligence in Aviation Industry

Running head: BUSINESS LAW
Business law
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS LAW
Issue
The issue in this situation is that whether Sam has been negligent in relation to the damages case
to the aircrafts belonging to white limited and green limited and the loss which the passenger of
blue limited had to suffer. The issue is also to determine whether the liability for negligence
would extend to the damages caused to the Mercedes car or not.
Rule
There are three components which has to be satisfied to give rise to a liability of negligence.
These three components are
Duty of Care
The Breach of duty of care
Causation (of the injury or harm)
The case of Donoghue v Stevenson (1932) AC 562 had initially invented and applied the
principles of Duty of Care, The Breach of duty of care and Causation. The duty of care has to be
to addressed through the application of the neighbour rule which the case had provided. The rule
makes a neighbour to have a duty of care to another neighbour if it is possible through
reasonable foreseeability that the other person may be harmed by carelessness.
The case of D'Arcy v Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane [2017] QSC 103 also
had been deployed to analyze duty of care. However this case took a different approach which is
known as the proximity approach or the caparo test. The caparo tests analyzes the proximity
between two people to determine the duty of care. Where the people are in close proximity to
each other and the action of one person can evidently harm the other a duty of care is present.

2BUSINESS LAW
The case of Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane v Greenway [2017] QCA 103
discussed provisions used to identify a breach of the duty of care. The approach which had been
taken by this case is known as the objective test. The person who had a duty of care is replaced
with a hypothetical reasonable person and then the actions of such person is compared to the
person having duty of care. If the actions are reasonable then there is no breach and in case they
are not there is a breach. The reasonability of actions is based on factors like probability and
seriousness of the injury and the burden of taking precautions as per section 5C of the Civil
Liability Act 2002. It is to be noted as per the case of Stokes v House With No Steps [2016] QSC
79 that the person does not have the obligation of preventing the harm, the obligation is actually
to take reasonable care.
The case of Liverpool Catholic Club Ltd v Moor [2014] NSWCA 394 analyzed the rules relating
to causation. In this case it had been stated by the court that the injury if not caused where there
is no breach of duty and the sole reason for the damage is the breach of duty the person has
caused “causation” the test applied is known as but for test.
Damages are a significant part of the tort or negligence. In the case of Chaina v Presbyterian
Church (NSW) Property Trust (No. 25) [2014] NSWSC 518 it had been clarified by the court
that a person would only be able to claim damages which are reasonably foreseeable.
Contributory negligence is the defence which is applied to limit a liability of negligence. The
rule had been deployed in the case of Astley v Austrust Ltd (1999) 14 JCL 251,
260. The case stated that when a person has not taken reasonable care to avoid the injury they are
negligent themselves in a contributory manner and the damages to be provided to them are
reduced with reference to the contributions made by them.