(solved) Business Law Doc

Running head: BUSINESS LAW 1
Law of Tort
Author Name(s)
Institution
Author Note

BUSINESS LAW 2
Abstract
In law, a tort is an offense where the court grants compensations as a remedy to the affected
party. As indicated in the Law of Torts, individuals owe others obligations in various ways. For
instance, all drivers must care for any other person using the road. Thus, the occupier of a
specific property must take reasonable care to all people who come to the property. This paper
will be focusing on discussing issues that may attract the attention of the law of tort.
Keywords: Tort of Negligence, Tort of Misrepresentation, Product Liability, Occupier.

BUSINESS LAW 3
Law of Tort
The law of tort requires people to be responsible while dealing with others. Also, the law
expects occupiers to make sure that their promises are safe from endangering the lives or the
properties of those who come to their premises. Similarly, businesses should ensure that their
products or services are safe and reliable to the customers who purchase them. In a deeper
discussion, this paper will be illustrating different applications of the law of tort.
Tort of Negligence and Misrepresentation
As the common torts, negligence, and misrepresentations are some of the torts that people
face on a regular basis. Starting with the tort of negligence, these are circumstances where one
person’s misconduct causes injuries to the other person (Kubasek, Browne, Dhooge, Herron &
Barkacs, 2016). On the part of misrepresentation, this one happens when a party’s conduct or
utterances present conditions that are untrue and convinces the other party to rely on those
conditions (Beatty, Samuelson & Bredeson, 2013). While misrepresentation can happen in both
the law of contract and the law of tort, this paper will focus on the law of tort where the law
punishes it by awarding compensation and even punitive damages (Kubasek, Browne, Dhooge,
Herron & Barkacs, 2016).
Tort of Negligence and Its element
There are essentially three elements of negligence, but the same elements can be broken
down to sub-elements. The first element is the duty of care (Miller & Cross, 2010). When a case
of negligence comes to the court, courts start by determining whether there was a duty to care
that the defendant owed to the claimant(Mann, Roberts & Smith, 2012). The case of (Donoghue
v Stevenson, 1932) was the first instance to determine a duty to care when it established the
concept of the 'neighbor principle.'

BUSINESS LAW 4
The case involved a claimant who found a decomposed snail in a bottle of beer when she
poured the remaining content into her glass. The judgment in this case established that the
defendant who was the manufacturer had breached his duty of care. With that, he was liable for
the claimant’s damages of £500 as claimed by the claimant. For fear of the misuse of this case,
the decision of (Lords in Caparo v Dickman, 1990) set out a three-stage test for the
determination of the duty to care.
After establishing a duty of care in the defendant, the court moves forward to find the
second element of negligence. This element seeks to find whether the defendant breached that
duty (Varuhas, 2014). Since the law requires each person who owes a duty of care to act
reasonably in executing that duty, the law seeks to find whether the actions of the defendant were
unreasonable. By reasonable, the law expects that a person should act in the same way a
reasonable person would have acted in such circumstances. Take for example the case of
(Nettleship v Weston, 1971). The driver was a third lesson student who caused an accident
injuring the claimant who was his instructor. When the court examined this case, they found that
the defendant had acted unreasonably hence liable for the damages.
The court’s third step or third element is to connect the claimant’s damages with the
defendant’s reckless actions. The working mechanism for this step is the ‘but for test’ which tests
for the direct relationship between the breached duty and the loss (Steele, 2017). The ‘but for
test’ goes hand in hand with establishing whether the claimed damages are reasonably
foreseeable (Twomey, Jennings, Fox & Anderson, 2011). That is to say; the damages should not
be too remote. Take for instance the case of (Barnett v Chelsea & Kensington Hospital
Management Committee, 1969) Though the law found the lack failure to examine a patient as a
neglect of duty, it court did not find a connection between the death of the Barnett husband and