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The Legal Principles For Negligence And Liability

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The purpose of this memo will be to examine and provide an overview of the legal principles for negligence and liability. Negligence is “behaviour or actions that fall below an expected of care”, and liability refers to the responsibility for the injury or harm1. For behaviour to be found negligent four elements need to be met and proven: duty of care, standard of care, damages and proximate cause1. This memo will describe the elements of negligence, liability, including vicarious liability and occupier’s liability, and the concepts of risk management.
Duty of Care Duty of care refers to a person being responsible for the safety of others if he or she can foresee these people being affected by his or her actions1. The presence of a relationship and the proximity principle are two elements that can give rise to a duty of care1. Relationships that give rise to duty of care include coaches-athletes, parents-child, chauffeur-passengers. The proximity principle, also referred to as the neighbour principle, refers to the duty a person has to refrain from conduct that can foreseeably cause injuries to those in one’s direct proximity. In Bain v. Calgary Board of Education, the defendant owed a greater duty of care to the students since the student’s parents signed a waiver authorizing the defendant to act on behalf of the parent in the reasonable care of the students, who came from a vocational school for the learning disabled. His standard of care was therefore equal to that of a

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