header-logo header-logo

Call of duty

02 September 2010 / Kenneth Warner
Issue: 7431 / Categories: Features , Damages , Personal injury
printer mail-detail

Kenneth Warner highlights the courts’ reluctance to invoke a duty of care for unconventional forms of damage

In the modern era, with the dramatic extension of paternalistic functions delegated to local authorities, we have seen a commensurate exposure of these bodies to liability under the principles of negligence law. Where the damage in issue comprises the standard sort of direct physical injury, the situation is a straightforward one, and the standard negligence enquiry ensues.

More recently however, other types of damage, which may yet be regarded as personal injury, have presented a much more complex circumstance. Litigation has been pursued against public authorities in relation to a range of other types of harm, including psychiatric illness (D v E Berkshire NHS Trust [2005] 2 AC 373, [2005] 2 WLR 993); physical and emotional neglect and suffering (X v Bedfordshire CC); enforced separation of young child from mother (M v Newham BC); failure to diagnose dyslexia in a young child (E v Dorset DC); failure to provide a child

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Writing in NLJ this week, Victoria Rylatt and Robyn Laye of Anthony Gold Solicitors examine recent international relocation cases where allegations of domestic abuse shaped outcomes
back-to-top-scroll