Tort Law Assignment 2010/11
By Louis Rohr
Student ID 10716461
1st year BCL
Title:
My Analyses on the Duty of Care in Irish Tort Law

Tort law covers a wide range of wrongs committed by one person against another. Tort law covers those wrongs that arise because of a breach of a duty imposed by law, as opposed to duties imposed by contract.
The first steps towards the modern doctrine of negligence was explained in Heven and Pender. Lord Esher discussed why a duty of care might be owed by one party not to injury another. First, that there must be duty of care owed. Secondly, that there is a breach of this duty. Third, that there must be loss or damage suffered. Fourth, that there is causal link established between the breach of duty and the loss or damage suffered. Later more fundamental elements were needed to prove negligence.
Indermaur v Dames is a leading common law case outlining the duty of care involving invitees and invitors. An invitee is a person who’s invited by the occupier (owner or tenant) and provides a material advantage, such as shops, bars etc. When an invitee enters an occupiers land he is expected to take reasonable care on his part to prevent damage from unusual danger for which he knows or ought to know. Where there is neglect, the question is whether or not they took reasonable care or was there contributory negligence? From here, the common law developed other rules to ultimately determine liability for buildings and include inter alia, elevators, planes trains and street cars.
In Lievre v Gould , Lord Esher stated that, “the question of liability for negligence cannot arise at all until it has been established that the man who has been negligent owed some duty to the person who seeks to make him liable for his negligence. A man is entitled to be as negligent as he pleases towards the whole world if he owes no duty to them.”