An act of Negligence is committed whenever a person is injured due to the irresponsibility or recklessness of another person. The followings are to be proved to succeed in a suit for the tort of negligence
That the defendant owed a duty of care towards the plaintiff
That such duty of care was breached through his conduct or action
That the plaintiff suffered damage or injury as a consequence.
According to Winfield, “Negligence as a tort is the breach of a legal duty to take care which results in damage, undesired by the defendant to the plaintiff”
In one of the leading cases involving the tort of negligence (Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932) Lord Macmillan observed, “The law takes no cognizance of carelessness in the abstract. It concerns itself with carelessness only where there is a duty to take care and where failure in that duty has caused damage. In such circumstances carelessness assumes the legal quality of negligence and entails the consequences in law of negligence. The cardinal principle of liability is that the party complained of should owe to the party complaining a duty to take care, and that the party complaining should be able to prove that he has suffered damage in consequence of a breach of that duty.”
In the words of Lord Wright, “In strict legal analysis negligence means more than heedless or careless conduct, whether in omission or commission. It connotes the complex concept of duty, breach and damage thereby suffered by the person to whom the duty was owing.”
However, when the defendant owed a duty of care to some other person other than the plaintiff, the plaintiff cannot sue even if he might have suffered damage by the defendant’s act. The plaintiff also needs to prove that the damage caused is not too remote a consequence of the defendant’s negligent act.
There are certain cases when the plaintiff is not required to prove that the injury he suffered was due to negligence on part of the defendant. This is based on the principle of ‘Res Ipsa Loquitur’ which means that, ‘the thing speaks for itself’ where the law presumes negligence on part of the defendant.
Negligence of two or more persons resulting in the same damage constitutes Composite Negligence. Such persons are known as composite tortfeasors and there liability is joint and several. Doctrine of Contributory Negligence
If a plaintiff is injured or has sustained damage due to his own negligence, which has contributed to the accident caused by the wrongful conduct of the defendant, he has committed an act of contributory negligence.
In England, the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act, 1945 states, “Where any person suffers damage as the result partly of his own fault and partly of the fault of any other person or persons, a claim in respect of that damage shall not be defeated by reason of the fault of the person suffering the damage, but the damages recoverable in respect thereof shall be reduced to such extent as the Court thinks just and equitable having regard to the claimant’s share in the responsibility for the damage.”
