Business Law Assignment - Tame v New South Wales
Added on 2020-03-16
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TAME V NSW2Introduction Tame v New South Wales (2002) 211 CLR 317 is amongst the leading cases of Australia when it comes to the obligation which one person owes to another based on negligence and the resultant contravention which lead to psychiatric injuries. This case saw the plaintiff making a claim of negligence against the law enforcement officer, in addition to the defamation as a result of the clerical mistake which the police undertook while the accident report was being filed. Upon the appeal being made against the police by the plaintiff based on the undertaken negligence of police in resulting in her psychiatric condition, the High Court rejected the appeal of the plaintiff.In this report, the police had wrongfully stated that blood alcohol level of Tame as .14 but this was actually the alcohol level of the other driver. And it was claimed by Tame that due to this, she felt that no one respected her and this is the reason why she developed the psychiatric state (Sappideen, 2009). Through the discussion being carried here, the case has been detailed where the issues and arguments presented by both the parties have been stated and the decision of the court has been critically analysed. Factual BackgroundTame in this case was involved in a collision of motor vehicles which took place on 11 Jan 1991 at Richmond, in Sydney. The accident occurred due to the fault of the other driver, Terence Lavender. After the accident, the law enforcement officers checked his blood alcohol level and itstood at .14, whereas the blood alcohol of Tame was 0 when the reading was taken (Federation Press, 2017).
TAME V NSW3Constable Morgan was responsible for preparing the traffic collision report and he was a part of the Windsor Police Station. While preparing this report at the incident spot, he left the blood alcohol reading details of both Tame and the other driver as blank. In Feb 1991, the then acting traffic sergeant filled these blank segments and while filing, accidently switched the blood alcohol of both the drivers, where the other driver was stated to have 0 alcohol level and Tame tohave .14 as the blood alcohol level. In around Mar 1991, the mistake was detected by the acting sergeant and he made corrections to the original report at this time (Health Law Central, 2017).Lavender was sued by Tame since he was driving a vehicle which was not insured as was required by the law and this claim was handled by NZI, which was the insurance company. Uponthe settlement of the claim, Tame was awarded a significant value. However, come May 1992, the insurance company became hesitant when it came to payment of the physiotherapy treatment which was needed by Tame as a result of her injuries and this made Tame very anxious. The attorney of Tame, Wellers, was informed by Tame that she had no history of drinking and that she had no current drinking issues since the last 20 years. The attorney was also informed that the notion of being drunk was so wrong that she was horrified of it. This reaction of Tame was highlighted upon Weller informing her that the report showed that Tame had been drunk when the accident took place. And Tame was very apprehensive about her reputation which would be damaged as a result of the grave error. The police issued a formal apology to Tame for their mistake; and still Tame continued to blame the law enforcement for the NZI being reluctant in their payments for her treatment. After some time, Tame became obsessed with this issue and was clinically diagnosed with the “psychotic depressive illness”. As a result of this, a claim was initiated by Tame in the NSW District Court against the police (Federation Press, 2017).
TAME V NSW4Issues and Arguments of the PartiesTame in this case, blamed her psychiatric injury as being resulted from the negligence of the police law enforcement officer where they failed in properly stating down her blood alcohol levelin the accident report. This in turn, as per the plaintiff, led to the apprehensions on part of NZI in making the payment for her treatment. And it also resulted in her reputation being tarnished as she had been sober since last 20 years. She claimed that the police officer owed her a duty of care to properly state the right facts in the report and by not doing so, the duty of care owed towards her was breached as this breach of duty resulted in her psychiatric injury. The defendant highlighted that they had already issued a formal apology to Tame. They also stated that the claim of defamation being cited by the plaintiff was out-rightly wrong. This was due to the fact that for a claim of defamation to be upheld, it has to be shown that the careless misstatement of the defendant was relied upon by a third party. Here, it was very clear that no one had made reliance over this careless misstatement of the police officer. This can be proved from the fact that plaintiff had no evidence for this to have occurred. And also from the fact that the insurance company had considered the changed report which had been made by the police after the careless misstatement was noticed and corrected upon. So, even the insurance company had not made reliance on the police officer’s careless misstatement (HCA, 2017).The plaintiff also made an argument that the police officer had been negligent in the report whichhad been prepared by them and this was the reason why she developed a psychiatric condition. Inthis regard, the defendant highlighted that for making a successful case of negligence, one has to establish certain elements (Harvey and Marston, 2009). These include foreseeability, duty, its breach, resulting harm, direct causation and remoteness of losses (Gibson and Fraser, 2014). In this regard, the defendant cited Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605 for
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