Question

What duties do you owe to the people closest to you, such as family, friends, and neighbors? What duties do you owe to people in general, any time and any place?

Dear Expert,

the course is BUS 3305: BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS

UNIT 3: Tort Law

Learning Journal Unit 3

Please provide references

Answer 1

Caring for people a moral option or a duty..Manus Charleton: “There are different views. For Hobbes, our nature is to seek power to satisfy our own desires. This is facilitated through a social contract between the people and government in which caring is left as a choice. We should be fair and kind to others, but only because it helps make for a society suited to pursuing our own interests.

“Kant saw caring as a duty that arises from universal moral laws. We could not rationally will a universal law that no care be provided to others because it entails that no care should have to be given to us. He’s not saying, ‘I’ll help you, provided you help me.’ He argues we would be in breach of our nature as rational human beings if we claim we have no duty of care.

“He calls it an ‘imperfect’ duty. This is because neither we (nor the State) can possibly care for everyone in all the ways needed. So we decide the amount and kind of care we give. But we become good people by how well we live up to the duty.

In recent decades some moral philosophers have emphasised caring as a natural human emotion and disposition. They have pointed out that we need and benefit from care throughout our lives, from parents, family, friends and the State. On this view we should nourish and practise caring in all aspects of our lives – personal, social and work-related – to reduce misery and hardship and realise our humanity.”

Yes. For Kant the duty of care includes care of oneself. Respect for oneself is also a duty along with respect for others. And for Aristotle selfcare is bound up with a natural desire to realise our own potential.”

An individual may owe a duty of care to another, to ensure that they do not suffer any unreasonable harm or loss. If such a duty is found to be breached, a legal liability is imposed upon the tortfeasor to compensate the victim for any losses they incur. The idea of individuals owing strangers a duty of care – where beforehand such duties were only found from contractual arrangements – developed at common law, throughout the 20th century. The doctrine was significantly developed in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson,[1] where a woman succeeded in establishing a manufacturer of ginger beer owed her a duty of care, where it had been negligently produced. Following this, the duty concept has expanded into a coherent judicial test, which must be satisfied in order to claim in negligence.

Generally, a duty of care arises where one individual or group undertakes an activity which could reasonably harm another, either physically, mentally, or economically. This includes common activities such as driving (where physical injury may occur), as well as specialised activities such as dispensing reliant economic advice (where economic loss may occur). Where an individual has not created a situation which may cause harm, no duty of care exists to warn others of dangerous situations or prevent harm occurring to them; such acts are known as pure omissions, and liability may only arise where a prior special relationship exists to necessitate them.

Duties do you owe to people in general, any time and any place...

At any given time, everyone has a legal duty to act reasonably so as to avoid injuring other people. When people fail to meet this legal duty, they may be liable for any resulting harm experienced by others. This is a core principle of personal injury law.

As an example, consider a car accident. If Driver A's car strikes Driver B's car after Driver A ran a red light, Driver B can sue Driver A (in most states) for resulting injuries and vehicle damage. This is true even though Driver A did not intend to injure Driver B. Driver A will likely be liable for injuries to Driver B because Driver A had a duty to act as a reasonable driver, and to avoid acting in a way that might cause injury to others on the road. To put this another way, Driver A (like all drivers on the roads and highways) owes a duty of care to everyone else on the road. A reasonable driver would not have driven through a red light because that act is careless and likely to injure others. So, we can say that Driver A breached a duty of care.

The duty to act reasonably with respect to the safet of others is the duty of care that applies in most situations. However, in some situations, the law imposes other duties of care. For example, common carriers (including bus drivers, train drivers, and airplane pilots) owe a particularly high duty of care to passengers. So, a bus company (a common carrier) might be liable for a passenger's injuries when the bus company was only slightly at fault for causing an accident.

The law also imposes a higher duty of care on some professionals, including doctors and lawyers. A doctor must not only act as a reasonable person would under the circumstances, but must also act with the skill and professionalism that a similarly-trained doctor would exhibit under the circumstances. Breach of this special medical standard of care can lead to a medical malpractice case.

The duty of care also applies to businesses. So, imagine that a coffee shop fails to place a rug or mat near a doorway on a rainy day. Water accumulates, and a customer slips and falls due to the slippery floor. The coffee shop failed to fulfill its duty to act as a reasonable business so as to avoid causing foreseeable injuries to customers. As a result, the customer will likely be able to sue the business for slip and fall injuries