Law:

Section:

(a) Torts--- ----Negligence---Duty of Care---Scope---Foreseeability of personal injury---Minor-driver and victim stole a vehicle from a commercial garage and drove off---Vehicle was being driven by the minor-driver, who crashed the same causing serious injury to the victim-passenger---Victim sued the minor-driver and the garage owner for negligence---At trial, it was held that the garage owner owed a duty of care to the victim---Questions as to whether a commercial garage business owed duty of care to injured passenger; whether risk of personal injury was reasonably foreseeable, and whether the business had positive duty to guard against risk of theft by minors---[Per Karakatsanis, J; Majority view: To establish a duty of care, there must be a relationship of proximity in which the failure to take reasonable care might foreseeably cause loss or harm to the plaintiff---Once foreseeability and proximity were made out, a prima facie duty of care was established---Whether or not something was "reasonably foreseeable" was an objective test---Question was properly focused on whether foreseeability was present prior to the incident occurring and not with the aid of hindsight---In the present case, it was not enough to determine simply whether the theft of the vehicle was reasonably foreseeable---Proper question to be asked was whether the type of harm suffered i.e. personal injury was reasonably foreseeable to someone in the position of the garage owner when considering the security of the vehicles stored at the garage---Evidence could establish that the garage owner ought to have known of the risk of theft, however, physical injury was only foreseeable when there was something in the facts to suggest that there was not only a risk of theft, but a risk that the stolen vehicle might be operated in a dangerous manner---To find a duty of care, there must be some circumstance or evidence to suggest that a person in the position of the garage owner ought to have reasonably foreseen the risk of injury that the stolen vehicle could be operated unsafely---Risk of theft in general did not automatically include the risk of theft by minors---Some evidentiary basis was required…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492