Duty of care

In plain English: a duty of care is a legal obligation to take reasonable care to avoid injuring other people. It's the first building block of a negligence claim. If nobody owed you a duty, there's usually nothing to claim for, even if you were badly hurt.

Situations where the duty is well settled

In most accident claims, whether a duty exists isn't the real argument. The law has long recognised these relationships:

• Drivers owe a duty to other drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians.
• Employers owe a duty to provide a reasonably safe workplace, equipment and training.
• Businesses and property occupiers owe a duty to visitors to keep premises reasonably safe.
• Doctors and hospitals owe a duty to their patients.
• Manufacturers owe a duty to the people who use their products.

Property and premises rules vary

Slip and fall claims are where duty differences are most noticeable. In England and Wales, occupiers owe a common duty of care to visitors under the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, with a more limited duty to trespassers under the 1984 Act. Scotland has the Occupiers' Liability (Scotland) Act 1960, and most Canadian provinces, including Ontario, have their own occupiers' liability statutes. Many US states still grade the duty by who you were: an invitee such as a shopper is owed the most care, a licensee such as a social guest less, and a trespasser the least. Some states have moved to a single reasonable-care standard.

Duty is not the same as breach

A duty only means the other side had to act reasonably. You still have to show they didn't. A supermarket has a duty to shoppers, but if a customer spilled juice ten seconds before you slipped, the store may not have breached that duty because it had no reasonable chance to clean it up. Inspection logs, CCTV and how long the hazard was there often decide these cases.

What the standard of care looks like

1. What would a reasonably careful person have done in the same situation?
2. How likely and how serious was the risk?
3. How easy or costly would it have been to prevent?
4. Were there industry rules, laws or safety codes that set a clear standard?

Breaking a safety law, such as a traffic regulation, often makes breach much easier to prove, although how much weight it carries depends on where you are.

Next: negligence · slip and fall vs trip and fall · assumption of risk.

Related terms