“Whenever the Courts Draw a Line to Mark Out the Bounds of Duty, They Do It as a Matter of Policy so as to Limit the Responsibility of the Defendant”. (Spartan Steel V Martin & Co [1973] Qb 27, Per Lord Denning, Mr)

654 Words3 Pages
There have been many tests to establish the bounds of duty such as Donaghue v Stephenson to more recently the Caparo test which states that for there to be a duty of care the act or omission must be foreseeable, proximate and just, reasonable and fair. The last Caparo test has been included as a matter of public policy, the main focus on this essay is to establish whether courts have the intention of limiting liability for the defendant when establishing duty of care. Many public authorities such as doctors escape liability due to public policy for example in the case of Hill it was held that there was no liability for the police because there was no proximity, this case meant that police could receive immunity of liability based on public policy this is because according to Lord keith the process of trying to prove liability is time consuming and deters the police from completing their main job which is protecting the main public, however it can be argued that police escaping liability may lead to absurdity and injustice on behalf of the claimant, if the police are at fault then they should be made to be liable, we can conclude that courts in this case use public policy to prevent any responsibility towards the defendant, this was further supported by Elguzouli-daf v commissioner of police where no duty of care was owed by the CPS because it was too time consuming, according to Lord Bingham in this case the police should have taken reasonable steps to prevent the crime from happening since they had the necessary means to do so and failing to do so should result in liability. Another reason why the bounds of duty may be a matter of public policy may be to limit floodgates, this is because public authorities are high respected and have specialist expertise therefore the concept of fair just and reasonable limits the liability for police officers, If

More about “Whenever the Courts Draw a Line to Mark Out the Bounds of Duty, They Do It as a Matter of Policy so as to Limit the Responsibility of the Defendant”. (Spartan Steel V Martin & Co [1973] Qb 27, Per Lord Denning, Mr)

Open Document