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Tort

09 June 2011
Issue: 7469 / Categories: Case law , Law digest
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Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd v Conarken Group Ltd; Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd v Farrell Transport Ltd [2011] EWCA Civ 644, [2011] All ER (D) 288 (May)

It was settled law that forseeability and remoteness were to be considered together. Forseeability, as an abstract concept, was not determinative. An imaginative person might foresee extremely broad consequences as potentially resulting from his actions. In considering whether consequences were too remote to create a liability in negligence, reasonableness had a part to play.

Further, the fact that a claimant had contractually agreed with a third party the level of damages that it would pay, would not necessarily bind the tortfeasor. It was not open to a party to dictate to the whole world the extend to tortious liability and what was reasonably foreseeable and not too remote in order to achieve what it regarded as a satisfactory contract with a third party. It might lead to ever more ingenious attempts to attribute possible loses to a tort and would be inimical to the simple solution desired.
 

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NEWS
The government’s plan to introduce a Single Professional Services Supervisor could erode vital legal-sector expertise, warns Mark Evans, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, in NLJ this week
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Writing in NLJ this week, Sophie Ashcroft and Miranda Joseph of Stevens & Bolton dissect the Privy Council’s landmark ruling in Jardine Strategic Ltd v Oasis Investments II Master Fund Ltd (No 2), which abolishes the long-standing 'shareholder rule'
In NLJ this week, Sailesh Mehta and Theo Burges of Red Lion Chambers examine the government’s first-ever 'Afghan leak' super-injunction—used to block reporting of data exposing Afghans who aided UK forces and over 100 British officials. Unlike celebrity privacy cases, this injunction centred on national security. Its use, the authors argue, signals the rise of a vast new body of national security law spanning civil, criminal, and media domains
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