LAW2447 Case Note: Commercial Law Analysis of D'Arcy v. Brisbane Synod

This case note analyzes the commercial law case of Natalie Kathleen D'Arcy versus The Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane, decided by the Supreme Court of Brisbane on May 31, 2017. The case revolves around issues of tort law, specifically negligence, arising from an injury sustained by the plaintiff while employed as a personal care worker. The plaintiff claimed the defendant failed to provide adequate instructions for a task, leading to injury. The analysis examines the legal issue, the arguments presented by both sides, and the judge's application of legal rules, including the determination of duty of care and breach of duty. The note critically assesses the judge's decision, concluding that the decision was arguable and potentially flawed. The case highlights the importance of employers providing clear instructions and ensuring a safe working environment, while also considering the employee's prior experience and the reasonableness of the task. The case note provides a detailed examination of the legal principles involved and the court's reasoning.

Commercial Law

Introduction
Case laws are considered as one of the most prominent and useful form of the decided case that
helps the country to generate the standards that are applied in the court systems. Hence through
this they are able to achieve the objective of framing the regulations and legislations in the
country. The case related to the law of torts, negligence and the essential action for the
negligence, damage and the causations1. The current case is a popular case of Natalie Kathleen
D’Arcy, now known as the plaintiff vs The Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane,
now known as defendant. The court in which the proceeding were done was Supreme Court of
Brisbane. The date of judgement was 31 may 2017. The bench that decided the case includes
Byrne SJA.
Identification of the legal issue
The legal issue that was considered for the purpose was related to Natalie Kathleen D’Arcy who
was the plaintiff for the purpose of the issue and the corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of
the Brisbane who was considered as the defendant in the given case. The above case related to
various laws of torts where the plaintiff was employed by the defendant as a personal care
worker and there was problem while giving the instruction due to which the injury was caused to
the plaintiff2. Here the plaintiff was given the instruction to bring the wheelie from the car and
the guidelines were not provided to how to remove the wheelie from the car3. The argument that
was made by the plaintiff includes that the no instruction were provided to me for how to take
the wheelie out from the car and due to which the injury was caused to him. The argument that
was provided by the defendant that removing the lightweight wheelie walker was easy task and
was considered to be the simple for any person. It was the everyday task for him and it does not
required any training for taking it out4.
1 Dawson, Tony. "James ralfe and the early surveys at port Macquarie." Journal of the
Royal Australian Historical Society104.1 (2018): 62.
2 Matthews, Richard Ellis Ford. A critical appraisal of viral taxonomy. CRC Press, 2018.
3 Murphy, Jeffrie G. Philosophy of law: An introduction to jurisprudence. Routledge,
2018.
4 Keren-Paz, Tsachi. Torts, egalitarianism and distributive justice. Routledge, 2018.

The judge examined that it was the legal duty of the employer and he should have taken care of
the plaintiff while taking the wheelie from the car boot. As this is seen that the guideline was not
provided hence there was a significant risk in taking out it from the car5. This was seen that there
was significant risk of injury hence the duty to take reasonable care was failing which gives the
birth to the liability of the employer.
A critical analysis of the judge’s application of the legal rules to solve the legal
issues
In the given case court analysed that whether the injury occurred to the employee was due to the
fact that reasonable care was not given by the employer. The judge used the law in the given case
and considered the injury and the amount of injury as this was reasonable or not. The rivalry case
to the issue where the breach of duties were done were considered for the circumstances. Also
the risk that was related to the issue was assessed in this case. The analyses that were done by the
court was dependant on the fact that damage, measure and remoteness of the damage in the
action of tort6.
Hence on the basis of these, the judge gave the decision to impose the penalty on the employer
which was seen that the action that was done by the employer was not correct as this task was
done by the plaintiff on the daily basis and it was not required to provide the guidelines for the
same work. He has the capability to do the task on the regular basis and also related to the
performance of the task on this basis7.
It was seen in this case that plaintiff won the judgement which was considered to be the arguable
judgement by the person.
5 Peyer, Sebastian. "Compensation Fallacay-Private Antitrust Enforcement and the Law of
Torts." (2018).
6 Jacob, Assaf, Alon Klement, and Yuval Procaccia. "In-Kind Transfers and the Law of
Torts." The Journal of Legal Studies47.1 (2018): 181-207.
7 Winfield, Percy H. "The history of Negligence in the law of Torts." LQ Rev. 42 (1926):
184.

Conclusion
It has been decided from the above case, that the decision that has been given by the judge was
considered to be wrong as this was based on one side. It was seen that the work that was done by
the worker was done on the regular basis and hence there was no requirement to give the
instruction for the same. So it is seen that the decision that was taken by the judge is not correct
and has errors in it.