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  • Read the following passage carefully and answer the question Under the tort of negligence, there are four elements a plaintiff must establish to succeed in holding a defe

Read the following passage carefully and answer the question

Under the tort of negligence, there are four elements a plaintiff must establish to succeed in holding a defendant liable. The Court of Appeals of Georgia outlined the elements for a prima facie case of negligence in Johnson v. American National Red Cross as follows: "(1) a legal duty to conform to a standard of conduct; (2) a breach of this duty; (3) a causal connection between the conduct and the resulting injury; and (4) damage to the plaintiff." Under the first element, a legal duty to a standard of due care, the plaintiff must prove the defendant had a duty to conform to a standard of conduct for the protection of the plaintiff against an unreasonable risk of injury. The duty of care will be determined by the applicable standard of care, and several factors can heighten the standard of care depending upon the relationship between the parties, whether the plaintiff was foreseeable, the profession of the defendant, etc. For example, the Red Cross has a duty, when supplying blood donations to hospitals, to do its best to ensure blood supplied is not tainted with any transferable viruses or diseases, such as an undetectable rare strain of HIV. A breach of the duty of care occurs when the defendant's actions do not meet the required level of the applicable standard of care due to the plaintiff. Whether a breach of the duty of the applicable standard of care occurs is a question for the trier of fact. There are several ways a plaintiff demonstrates a breach of the duty of care; these include actions against the custom in an industry, violation of a statute or, in some cases, res ipsa loquitor. Res ipsa loquitor permits the mere fact that damages occurred, with some additional evidence presented by the plaintiff, to show, therefore, that a breach of the duty must have occurred. After demonstrating there was a duty, and it has been breached by the defendant's conduct, the plaintiff must prove his or her injuries were caused by such negligent conduct. To hold the defendant liable for such negligent conduct causing injuries, the plaintiff must prove actual cause and proximate cause.

To show actual cause, the plaintiff must prove that, but for the defendant's negligent conduct, which could be either the defendant's Act or omission to act if the situation or relationship required action by the defendant, the injuries or damages would not have occurred. The proximate cause of the injury is the legal causation aspect of this element which follows the chain of events from the negligent conduct to the damages.

Question

A, who is a railway station employee, sees that B has left his bag on the station, and to help B, he throws the bag towards the moving train. However, the bag contained fireworks which exploded and caused injury to another passenger C. Decide.

 

Option: 1

The Railway would be liable for negligence

 


Option: 2

B would be liable for negligence

 


Option: 3

Both Railway and B would be liable for negligence

 


Option: 4

Nobody would be liable for negligence

 


Answers (1)

The Court, in the case of Palsgraf vs Long Island Railroad Co(1928), has held that the cause of the injury should be in direct relation with the Act; however, in this case, the railway employee was not aware that the bag contained fireworks. Therefore C would not be entitled to claim any damages for negligence.

Hence d) is the right answer.

 

 

Posted by

Sumit Saini

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