Tort Law

If the defendant has duty of care to the plaintiff and breaches his duty of care, as long as it can be proved that the defendant’s careless conduct causes damage, injury or loss to the plaintiff while the damages are foreseeable, the defendant will be liable to negligence. The following shows why ABC ltd is negligent and therefore liable to Johnny and Kenneth.
Negligence is behavior that falls below the standard of reasonable, prudent and competent people. The careless behavior alone of the waiter would not incur liability to ABC ltd. Only when it leads to the damage by negligence, which is actionable, would incur liability. In Donoghue v Stevenson, friends of Mrs. Donoghue bought her a bottle of ginger beer, which contained a composed snail and caused Mrs. Donoghue to be ill. Since Mrs. Donoghue did not buy the beer, she could not sue under contract law but in tort. The Court held that manufacturer owed duty of care to Mrs. Donoghue and that duty was breached. The rationales behind were that Mrs. Donoghue should have had in their mind as being influenced by their careless behavior. People owe duty of care to their neighbor, who is anyone whom they can reasonably foresee as being affected by their acts or omissions. The damages were easily foreseeable by the company when the waiter carried the hot water in a careless manner and of course it would definitely affect the customers or everyone in the restaurant. Therefore, ABC ltd owes duty to Johnny and Kenneth.
As the duty of care exists, the question is whether the restaurant has breached the duty of care and therefore liable to Johnny and Kenneth. Lord Reid held in Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks Co that 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 that which a prudent and reasonable man would not do. In Glasgow Corporation v Muir, the court also held that the reasonable