Decided Cases - Law of Tort - Past Exam, Exams of Law of Torts

Download Decided Cases - Law of Tort - Past Exam and more Exams Law of Torts in PDF only on Docsity! PRIFYSGOL ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY DEGREE EXAMINATIONS 2009 DEPARTMENT OF LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY LAW OF TORT (LA36030) Time allowed THREE hours Answer FOUR questions including AT LEAST ONE question from SECTION A and AT LEAST TWO questions from SECTION B. This exam is Open Book. Candidates may bring any materials, other than library books, into the examination. Section A 1. With reference to decided cases, critically discuss and evaluate to what extent the law on trespass to the person or trespass to land has been capable of providing relief in areas of modern concern, such privacy, harassment, environmental concern or others. In your answer isolate the elements of the tort which have proved problematic in accommodating these modern-day areas of conflict. 2. Consider, with reference to relevant cases, the requirement in English law that a claimant must have sufficient interest in land in order to be able to sue in private nuisance. 3. “A claimant seeking recognition of a novel duty [of care] situation will now have to argue his case in the context of existing authority and to persuade the court that to extend liability into this new situation accords with previous analyses of policy and justice in analogous cases.” Discuss this statement in light of Caparo v Dickman ([1990] 1 All ER 568) and more recent English cases. 4. “Just as the likelihood of harm affects the standard of care demanded, so too does the magnitude of that harm.” Discuss this statement with regard to modern negligence law and illustrate your answer by reference to decided cases. Please turn over…. Section B 5. John buys a trampoline for the use of his children. He erects it in his back garden and does not forget to add the safety net. The instructions clearly say that only one child at a time should play on the trampoline, but John allows his three children, aged ten, eight and six, to play there together, because they obviously enjoy it much more and also he was fed up hearing arguments about whose turn it was to play on the trampoline. John has also told his neighbour, Paul, that his two children, aged four and six, are welcome to use the trampoline (as, indeed, is Paul), so long as Paul supervises them and only one child is on it at a time. One day John had to leave for a meeting with George. Before he left the children asked if they could play on the trampoline, to which he agreed. While the three children were playing on the trampoline they were joined by Paul‟s children, Boris and Igor. Paul did not notice they had left the house as he was busy tending his cannabis plants at the time. At some point John‟s son, Mick, pushed his sister, Nico, over and she bashed her head off one of the poles holding the safety net, causing much bleeding. All three children then went to find their mother to report the accident. While they were gone Boris and Igor climbed onto the trampoline to play. Boris fell badly when he crashed into Igor and landed on his head, breaking his neck in an accident that left him paralysed form the waist down. While this was happening John‟s children, unable to find their mother, went next door to find Paul who, in the meantime, had gone to his children upon their hearing cries from the trampoline. While looking for Paul in the house, Mick discovered what he thought was chocolate cake and stole a large piece, which he subsequently ate. In fact it was a cannabis cookie, and the amount of cannabis in the drug was enough to make Mick very ill, requiring that he be taken to hospital. A doctor at the hospital, Dr Strangelove, misdiagnosed Mick‟s condition and concluded that Mick was suffering from a virus that was going round the local schools. He told Mick‟s father, John, who had just arrived that Mick just needed some rest and plenty of fluids. As a consequence Mick was extremely unwell for two days. Eventually, Mick told John that he became unwell after eating one of Paul‟s cookies. Outline and discuss the torts issues arising out of these facts. Please turn over…..