| Baker v T E Hopkins & Son Ltd | |
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| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Decided | July 24th 1959 |
| Citation(s) | [1959] [1959] EWCA Civ 4, [1959] 1 WLR 966 |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | LORD JUSTICE MORRIS, LORD JUSTICE ORMEROD, and LORD JUSTICE WILLMER |
| Keywords | |
| Negligence, Duty to Rescue, Volenti non fit injuria, Contributory negligence, Causation | |
Baker v. T E Hopkins & Son Ltd [1959] 3 All ER 225 is a Court of Appeal of England and Wales decision dealing with the issue of helpers' liability in tort.
Two employees of the defendant company were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes in a well they were attempting to decontaminate. The plaintiff, a doctor, went in to try to rescue them even though he was warned of the fumes and told that the fire brigade was on the way. The fumes had been caused by the company negligently placing a motor operated pump at the bottom of the well on some scaffolding in order to assist in the pumping out of the well. All three men died.
The defendant company argued that (the estate of) the plaintiff doctor should either not be compensated because the doctor knowingly accepted the risk he was taking or his damages would be reduced for contributory negligence. The Court of Appeal considered that such a suggestion was "ungracious" and that it was unseemly and irrational to say that a rescuer freely takes on the risks inherent in a rescue attempt. The doctor's contributory negligence could only be recognised if he showed "a wholly unreasonable disregard for his own safety".
This case is one of the many in which the courts have refused to hold rescuers who have suffered in their rescue attempts to have negligently contributed to their injuries nor to have accepted the risks involved in their rescue attempt. This applies to both amateur and professional rescuers, such as fire fighters (See Ogwo v. Taylor [1988] AC 431).
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Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. The core concept of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care in their actions, by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people or property.
Res ipsa loquitur is a doctrine in common law and Roman-Dutch law jurisdictions under which a court can infer negligence from the very nature of an accident or injury in the absence of direct evidence on how any defendant behaved in the context of tort litigation. Although specific criteria differ by jurisdiction, an action typically must satisfy the following elements of negligence: the existence of a duty of care, breach of appropriate standard of care, causation, and injury. In res ipsa loquitur, the existence of the first three elements is inferred from the existence of injury that does not ordinarily occur without negligence.
In some common law jurisdictions, contributory negligence is a defense to a tort claim based on negligence. If it is available, the defense completely bars plaintiffs from any recovery if they contribute to their own injury through their own negligence.
Comparative negligence, called non-absolute contributory negligence outside the United States, is a partial legal defense that reduces the amount of damages that a plaintiff can recover in a negligence-based claim, based upon the degree to which the plaintiff's own negligence contributed to cause the injury. When the defense is asserted, the factfinder, usually a jury, must decide the degree to which the plaintiff's negligence and the combined negligence of all other relevant actors all contributed to cause the plaintiff's damages. It is a modification of the doctrine of contributory negligence that disallows any recovery by a plaintiff whose negligence contributed even minimally to causing the damages.
Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582 is an English tort law case that lays down the typical rule for assessing the appropriate standard of reasonable care in negligence cases involving skilled professionals such as doctors. This rule is known as the Bolam test, and states that if a doctor reaches the standard of a responsible body of medical opinion, they are not negligent. Bolam was rejected in the 2015 Supreme Court decision of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board in matters of informed consent.
The last clear chance doctrine of tort law is applicable to negligence cases in jurisdictions that apply rules of contributory negligence in lieu of comparative negligence. Under this doctrine, a negligent plaintiff can nonetheless recover if he is able to show that the defendant had the last opportunity to avoid the accident. Though the stated rationale has differed depending on the jurisdiction adopting the doctrine, the underlying idea is to mitigate the harshness of the contributory negligence rule. Conversely, a defendant can also use this doctrine as a defense. If the plaintiff has the last clear chance to avoid the accident, the defendant will not be liable.
Volenti non fit iniuria is a Roman legal maxim and common law doctrine which states that if someone willingly places themselves in a position where harm might result, knowing that some degree of harm might result, they are not able to bring a claim against the other party in tort or delict. Volenti applies only to the risk which a reasonable person would consider them as having assumed by their actions; thus a boxer consents to being hit, and to the injuries that might be expected from being hit, but does not consent to his opponent striking him with an iron bar, or punching him outside the usual terms of boxing. Volenti is also known as a "voluntary assumption of risk".
Comparative responsibility is a doctrine of tort law that compares the fault of each party in a lawsuit for a single injury. Comparative responsibility may apply to intentional torts as well as negligence and encompasses the doctrine of comparative negligence.
Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804, 532 P.2d 1226 (1975), commonly referred to simply as Li, is a California Supreme Court case that judicially embraced comparative negligence in California tort law and rejected strict contributory negligence.
Causation is the "causal relationship between the defendant's conduct and end result". In other words, causation provides a means of connecting conduct with a resulting effect, typically an injury. In criminal law, it is defined as the actus reus from which the specific injury or other effect arose and is combined with mens rea to comprise the elements of guilt. Causation only applies where a result has been achieved and therefore is immaterial with regard to inchoate offenses.
In English tort law, there can be no liability in negligence unless the claimant establishes both that they were owed a duty of care by the defendant, and that there has been a breach of that duty. The defendant is in breach of duty towards the claimant if their conduct fell short of the standard expected under the circumstances.
In the English law of negligence, the acts of the claimant may give the defendant a defence to liability, whether in whole or part, if those acts unreasonably add to the loss.
Summers v. Tice, 33 Cal.2d 80, 199 P.2d 1 (1948), is a seminal California Supreme Court tort law decision relating to the issue of liability where a plaintiff cannot identify with specificity which among multiple defendants caused his harm. The case established the doctrine of alternative liability and has had its greatest influence in the area of product liability in American jurisprudence.
Martin v. Herzog, Ct. of App. of N.Y., 228 N Y. 164, 126 N.E. 814 (1920), was a New York Court of Appeals case.
Tedla v. Ellman was a 1939 New York Court of Appeals case that was influential in establishing the bounds of the negligence per se doctrine. Ordinarily, a statutory violation automatically constitutes negligence. However, the court, in an opinion written by Irving Lehman, instead held that because this violation occurred in a situation not anticipated by the drafters of the statute and the violation was in keeping with the spirit of the statute, it did not constitute negligence.
Roles v. Nathan [1963] 1 W.L.R. 1117, [1963] 2 All E.R. 908 is an occupiers' liability case in English tort law. It concerns s.2(3)(b) of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, which states,
"An occupier may expect that a person, in the exercise of his calling, will appreciate and guard against special risks ordinarily incident to it, so far as the occupier leaves him free to do so."
Wrongful birth is a legal cause of action in some common law countries in which the parents of a congenitally diseased child claim that their doctor failed to properly warn of their risk of conceiving or giving birth to a child with serious genetic or congenital abnormalities. Thus, the plaintiffs claim, the defendant prevented them from making a truly informed decision as to whether or not to have the child. Wrongful birth is a type of medical malpractice tort. It is distinguished from wrongful life, in which the child sues the doctor.
The civil liability of a recreational diver may include a duty of care to another diver during a dive. Breach of this duty that is a proximate cause of injury or loss to the other diver may lead to civil litigation for damages in compensation for the injury or loss suffered.
Venning v Chin (1974) 10 SASR 299 is a Supreme Court of South Australia full court judgment, by which it was decided that in trespass cases, the onus lies on the defendant to disprove fault. However, for injuries caused in highway accidents, the onus is on the plaintiff to prove fault on the part of the defendant.
Chapman v Hearse is a significant case in common law related to duty of care, reasonable foreseeability and novus actus interveniens within the tort of negligence. The case concerned three parties; Chapman who drove negligently, Dr Cherry who assisted him on the side of the road, and Hearse who, in driving negligently, killed Dr Cherry while he was assisting Chapman. In the Supreme Court of South Australia, Hearse was found liable for damages to Dr Cherry's estate under the Wrongs Act 1936. Hearse sought to reclaim damages from Chapman due to his alleged contributory negligence; Chapman was found liable to one quarter of the damages. Chapman appealed the case to the High Court of Australia on August 8, 1961, but it was dismissed as the results of his negligence were deemed reasonably foreseeable. A duty of care was established between Chapman and the deceased and his claim of novus actus interveniens was rejected. Dr Cherry was considered a 'rescuer' and his respective rights remained.