Legal Obligations

... Resit Coursework. Obligations II. Having established that the defendant owes the plaintiff a duty of care (and in this case it is assumed that this has been established), it will next be necessary for the courts to decide whether the defendant has breached that duty. This first involves an assessment by the court of how, in the circumstances, the defendant ought to have behaved; what standard of care should he have exercised. This standard is that of the ordinary and reasonable citizen and not that of the defendant himself: an especially careful defendant will not be held liable because he fell short of his own high standards, however, a defendant whose personal conception of what is reasonable fails to match that of the court will have no defence based on his belief that he acted carefully. Although the concept of the reasonable man is well developed and accepted in tort law it

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