BUSN7052 Chap.3 Negligence: Duty of Care and Breach
Negligence: Duty of Care and Breach
Negligence is the civil wrong a business meets most often, and in the ACT it is governed by the common law together with the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002. This chapter covers the first two elements. Duty asks whether harm of the kind suffered was foreseeable and whether it is reasonable to impose care, using the neighbour principle, the established duty relationships and the salient features test for new situations.
Breach asks what a reasonable person in the defendant's position would have done, weighing probability, seriousness, burden of precautions and social utility.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Donoghue v Stevenson and the neighbour principle
- 02
Presumed duties such as occupier and invitee
- 03
Salient features and policy limits on duty
- 04
Section 42 standard of a reasonable person in the defendant's position
- 05
Probability, gravity, burden and utility in the breach calculus
- 06
Paris v Stepney contrasted with Bolton v Stone
Worked example · free
A double-parked courier van on a narrow street
- +1Duty: road users owe a duty to other road users, one of the relationships in which a duty is presumed.
- +1Standard: s 42 asks what a reasonable courier would do knowing the street was narrow and a loading zone was nearby.
- +2Risk: cyclists being forced into oncoming traffic was foreseeable and not insignificant, and the possible harm is serious.
- +1Precaution: walking 50 metres from the loading zone is a small burden with no competing social utility, so breach is likely; causation is a separate question.
Key terms
- Neighbour principle
- Lord Atkin's test that care is owed to those so closely affected that one ought to have them in mind.
- Salient features
- Factors such as vulnerability and control used to decide whether a duty exists in a new situation.
- Standard of care
- The level of care a reasonable person in the defendant's position would exercise.
- Social utility
- The benefit of the defendant's activity, weighed against the risk it creates.
Negligence: Duty of Care and Breach FAQ
Which relationships carry a presumed duty of care?
The Week 3 slides list professionals and clients, employers and employees, teachers and students, road users, and occupiers with their invitees, suppliers and consumers, citing Modbury Triangle. Outside those categories, a duty depends on salient features such as the plaintiff's vulnerability, the defendant's control over the risk, and policy considerations.
Why was the cricket club in Bolton v Stone not negligent?
A ball had left the ground only a handful of times in thirty years without injuring anyone, so the probability of harm was tiny. Removing the risk would have required a huge wall or stopping cricket altogether, and the House of Lords held a reasonable person could disregard such a remote risk.
Does an emergency lower the standard of care?
It can. In Watt v Hertfordshire, firefighters moved rescue equipment in an unsuitable truck to save a trapped woman, and a firefighter was injured. Taking that risk in an ordinary commercial setting would have been negligent, but the need to save life justified accepting a higher level of risk.
Are public authorities treated like private defendants?
Not entirely. Sections 110 to 112 of the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act limit their liability: their functions are judged against their available resources, a breach of statutory duty requires conduct no reasonable authority would consider reasonable, and failing to prohibit or regulate an activity does not by itself create liability.
Exam move
Learn duty and breach as two separate paragraphs you could write in any business scenario. For duty, start by asking whether the relationship is one of the presumed categories; if it is, cite Modbury Triangle and move on, because examiners reward brevity where the point is clear. Reserve the salient features analysis for genuinely new relationships, and practise it on two contrasting invented cases.
For breach, make a four-column table of the calculus factors and, for each past case you learn, record which factor decided it: Paris for gravity, Bolton for probability and burden, Watt for social utility, Fitzsimmons for the reasonableness of a cleaning system. Then take a fresh scenario and sort every fact into a column before writing.
Rehearse the s 42 sentence until you can write it naturally with the defendant's knowledge built in. Remember the marking guides' repeated warning that negligence is often a supporting issue in wider questions: aim for a crisp paragraph per element with one section and one case, rather than a page on duty alone.
Finally, keep breach separate from causation, because Chapter 4 shows that a clear breach can still fail if the precaution would not have prevented the harm.
Working through Negligence: Duty of Care and Breach in BUSN7052? Sia is AskSia’s AI Law tutor — ask any BUSN7052 Negligence: Duty of Care and Breach question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how BUSN7052 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.