Introduction

Negligence

Negligence occurs if someone suffers harm, and the person who causes such harm does so through carelessness.
For example, Mr Harley, a blind man tripped over a long-handled hammer which had been left near a hole in the pavement. The House of Lords held that the Electricity Board whose workmen had dug the hole, had failed to consider that blind people might be passers by.
A reasonable man would have foreseen this and taken the necessary precautions. The Board had fallen below the standard of the reasonable man. The Court therefore awarded Mr Haley damages in negligence (Haley v London Electricity Board [1964]).

Types of negligence …show more content…
contributory negligence
2. voluntary assumption of risk.

Contributory negligence
Contributory negligence occurs when a plaintiff fails to meet the standard of care required of them for their own protection—this being a contributory cause, with the defendant’s conduct, of the plaintiff’s injury.
Contributory negligence is really the plaintiff’s failure to avoid harm caused by the defendant’s conduct (for example, a pedestrian steps onto the street without looking and is hit by a speeding car). The position is that when contributory negligence is present, responsibility for the injury will be apportioned between the plaintiff and defendant, according to their respective degrees of responsibility.
The Civil Liability Act 2002 (NSW) now allows a court to reduce a plaintiff’s damages by 100%.

Voluntary assumption of the risk of harm
The plaintiff consents to or voluntarily assumes the risk of injury. It is a complete defence and, if successfully pleaded, the plaintiff will not be able to recover anything.
This means that the plaintiff agrees to assume the risk of the harm personally, which absolves the defendant from responsibility for it. For example a person who participates in a rugby match cannot complain if he suffers an injury when an opponent accidentally kicks him in the …show more content…
It discourages the efficient exercise of control because organizations which exert control over agents are likely to be deemed “masters,” and thus face liability fortheir agents’ torts. It also is inefficient because it distorts independent contractor relationships by providing organizations which hire independent contractors with excessive incentives to employ thinly capitalized independent contractors..Finally, it fails to provide organizations with efficient incentives to use the other tools available to them, such as financial incentives, to induce wealth-constrained independent contractors to take efficient care to prevent harm to others. Organizations bear the full cost of care, but they do not obtain the full benefit of preventing accidents when their independent contractors cannot pay for the harms they