Negligence is not a feeling. It is a cause of action with four elements, and you should write them in order every time: duty of care, breach, causation, and legally recognised damage. Skip a box and the claim fails, however ugly the facts.
Law of Torts · Lecture notes
The Negligence Map: Duty, Breach, Causation, Damage
A four-box method for every negligence problem, from Donoghue’s neighbour to Caparo, Bolam, and The Wagon Mound.
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Established duty situations — road users, doctor and patient, employer and employee, manufacturer and consumer — can be stated shortly. Novel duties still travel through Caparo: foreseeability of harm to this claimant, proximity, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty. Donoghue v Stevenson remains the neighbour principle; Caparo is how courts police its expansion, especially for pure economic loss and public authorities.
Breach
The standard is the reasonable person in the defendant’s position. For professionals, Bolam (as qualified by Bolitho) asks whether a responsible body of opinion supports the conduct, and whether that opinion withstands logical analysis. Risk is weighed against likelihood, gravity, cost of precautions, and social utility (Paris v Stepney Borough Council; Watt v Hertfordshire).
Causation and remoteness
Factual causation is the but-for test, with modifications for multiple causes and material contribution. Legal causation asks whether a later event broke the chain. Remoteness is the Wagon Mound (No 1) question: was this type of damage reasonably foreseeable? The thin-skull rule still takes the claimant as found, once the type of injury is foreseeable.