Waine

Business Law – Course Work Assessment

Issue 1

Simon has a claim against Universal Construction plc. for his injuries, caused by the poor excavation of the foundations of the office block next to his house and the loss of earnings he experienced while he was at the hospital.

Universal Construction plc. was building a new office block next to Simon´s house. The foundations had been poorlyexcavated and the office block was half finished, this caused subsidence to occur to Simon´s house, that at the same time caused a wall of Simon´s house to collapse. Simon was inside the house at this moment and he was injured, so he had to spend a month in hospital recovering. Simon is self-employed, so he was unable to tender for some lucrative contracts that possibly would have reportedpossible earnings of £20.000.

Now I will discuss how the law of negligence must be applied to this case, trying to determine if Simon should be compensated for his injuries and the loss of earnings he experienced.

Reading page 464 of English Law and Lecture 1 slides, we can see that negligence is an example of tort and it is no just careless conduct. To succeed in a negligence action, claimant mustprove that the defendant owes duty of care to him, also showing that there is a loss or/and damage caused by that breach of duty.

Alderson B (1856) said ¨negligence is the omission to do something, which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations, which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a reasonable prudent man would not do¨.Applying these words to the case, we can clearly se that Universal Construction plc. was negligent because a reasonable company would have revised, at least one time, the foundations of a building before it was half finished. They will also be negligent, if they had revised the office block and did not wanted to do anything to solve the problem, to avoid spending more money or working more on thebuilding.

In Donoghue v Stevenson (1932), the court held that the neighbour principle should be used to determine the existence of duty of care. For Lord Atkin to decide whether if someone is your neighbour or not, you must make an objective test of proximity and you must study if there is a reasonable foreseeability that the accident will happen, taking a look at the level of care that defendanttook while he was working.

To know if Universal Construction plc. owes Simon a duty of care it is essential taking a look to Caparo v Dickman (1990) case, in which the court held that in order to determine whether the defendant owed duty of care we have to make the next questions:

1. Was it foreseeable that the defendant would injure the claimant by the action in question?

In my opinion,of course it was foreseeable that Universal Construction plc. would injure someone one day, because it is foreseeable that if the foundations of a block are poorly excavated and it is already half finished, some day the wall of one neighbour is going to collapse and it is very likely that if someone is inside the house he will be injured.

2.Was there a sufficient proximity between the defendantand the claimant?

Yes there was, Simon was living in the house next to the office block they were building, so there was a geographical proximity between the defendant and the claimant.

3. It is fair, just and reasonable that the court should impose a duty?

In one hand, it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty of care to Universal Construction plc. for the injuries and damagesthat Simon suffered. Hence, they should compensate Simon for the injuries and the physical damage of the house they caused. In the other hand, we must study in depth if Universal Construction plc. owes a duty of care for the loss of earnings that Simon experienced while he was recovering in hospital.

To succeed in this action for negligence, Simon must prove the defendant owed him a duty of...