duty of care

The legal obligation that a person may be owed by another with whom the person has no formal contractual obligation. The concept of duty of care arose in Donoghue v Stevenson, a common law case decided in 1932 in the House of Lords. In medicine, proof of negligence requires that the allegedly negligent party had undertaken an activity which could reasonably harm the plaintiff and that the defendant owed the injured party a duty of care.

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Modern definitions of duty of care and its significance for legal cases of negligence stem from a landmark 1932 British tort case, Donoghue vs Stevenson, also known as 'the snail in a bottle case' (Bryden & Storey, 2011; Fullbrook, 2005; Johnson, 2004; Murphy, 1980).

In establishing negligence, several elements must be proven by the claimant: that a duty of care was owed to them by the defendant; that the duty was breached by the defendant; that the claimant suffered some form of reasonably foreseeable harm or damage; that this harm was caused by the defendant's breach of duty of care (Bryden & Storey, 2011; NZNO, 2016).

For New Zealand nurses, the legal application of a duty of care is informed by other legislation including the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (HPCA) and the New Zealand Nursing Council Registered Nurse Scope of Practice and Competencies.

Nursing's duty of care: From legal obligation to moral commitment/Te kawenga kia ata tiaki te ao tapuhi: Mai i te herenga a-ture ki te whakaunga a-tikanga

1 'Did [Multiplex] owe a duty of care to the [Owners']

Corporation independently of the existence of a duty of care owed to

2 'Did [Multiplex] owe a duty of care to Chelsea and thereby a

NEGLIGENCE CLAIMS BY SUBSEQUENT BUILDING OWNERS: DID THE LIFE OF BRYAN END TOO SOON?

The first element to be proven is that there is a duty of care between the plaintiff and the defendant.

So to prove duty of care exists the plaintiff will have to show two things:

As a health professional you owe a duty of care to your clients as you have a relationship with them and your acts or omissions will affect them.

Negligence: what you need to know: in the first of a series of articles we will review the law of negligence, in order to understand the obligations of health professionals

but the same is not true of the duty of care. Historically, the

corporate law duty of care has been underenforced at best, and arguably

It seems that the duty of care does not have many defenders

A defense of the corporate law duty of care