Duty of Care: GELERAL
Week 2::Seminar 2
This concept is based on three proof of elements, its ingredients are – A legal Duty of D towards the C to exercise care in such conduct of D as falls within the scope of the duty, Breach of that Duty means failure to come up to the standard required by law & Consequential damage to C which can be attributed to D’s conduct.
Duty of Care General: Duty is the primary control device which allows the courts to keep liability for negligence within what they regard as acceptable limits and the controversies which have centered around the criteria for the exercise of a duty reflect differences of opinion as to the proper ambit of liability for negligence. Before Donoghue v Stevenson, there was no …show more content…

In CoA the court said that Dickman owed a duty of care to the Claimant 1 means Caparo the Exisisting share holders but not the others of the city who bought new shares. They innovated a three stage principle here, 1st is there any precedent there similar to that case? 2nd if not, then is there any similar case as present scenario that court can by analogy give a decision? And 3rd if it is an unique then court will examine three elements here, 1) was it in D’s reasonable contemplation what he was doing may cause harm to the defendant? 2) Was there sufficient proximity of relationship between the D and C? and 3) Will it be fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty on the D?
Here Court found that as Dickman knew the existing shareholders there was a sufficiently proximity of relationship, and court thought it was just fair and reasonable to impose a duty.
However when this case reached to the House of Lords Lord Bridge kept the principle same innovated by CoA but at the same time he interpreted it in a different way. He pointed out that as Caparo already had the shares of F they were bound to face the loss even if Dickman had not done the nonfeasance, and thus there was no proximity of relationship.
Commentary: 1st of all the new share holders were denied to recover their damage because court did not found any proximity of relationship between the parties. However, again it is a policy matter, the class of new shareholders was so large, and if court wanted they