Law of Tort: Liability, Fault, Defences, Damages and Psychiatric Injuries

LAW OF TORT
STUDENT ID:
[Pick the date]

PART A
Question 1
Issue
The key issue is to ascertain the potential liabilities of the concerned parties based on the
negligence or tort law.
Relevant Law
In order to establish the presence of negligence, it is imperative that three main conditions
ought to be fulfilled. One of these relates to the presence of duty to care on the part of the
defendant which ought to be directed towards the plaintiff. In order to check the same, the
neighbour principle is applied whereby a neighbour is defined as an underlying party which
may suffer adverse consequences on account of decision to act or not taken by the action
doer1. This is in line with the decision pronounced in the Donoghue v Stevenson2 case. The
classification of a concerned party as neighbour implies that a duty to care arises on the
defendant3.
The second condition is that there should be breach of the duty to care. This would typically
happen if the defendant would not take the requisite care which any reasonable person would
be expected to take in a given situation. It is essential to note that the care required would be
dependent on the level of risk of foreseeable damage4. The third condition is that the damage
must be suffered by the plaintiff, which could be physical, financial, mental or emotional. An
essential aspect is that the damage should be linked to the breach of duty to care. In order to
establish the same, it needs to be proved that in the absence of breach of duty, the damages
could have been prevented5.
Application & Conclusion
In the given case, the conduct of Archie would be considered as negligent since Archie is not
only a beginner but also is drunk and hence should have avoided skiing on a dangerous slope.
Clearly such a step could potentially lead to damage in the form of injuries to other persons
1 Shayne Davenport, Business and Law in Australia (Thomson Reuters, 4th ed, 2012)
2 Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] UKHL 100
3 Andy Gibson, Douglas Fraser, Business Law (Pearson Publications., 8th ed., 2014)
4 Pendleton, Wayne & Vickery, Roger, Australian business law: principles and applications, (Pearson Publications, 5th ed.,
2015)
5 Robert Bryan Vermeesch, Kevin Edmund Lindgren, Business Law of Australia (Butterworths, 12th ed. 2011)