Negligence Simplified

November 10, 2014

5. Duty of Care

You owe a duty of care to everyone that uses your facilities and/or participates in your programs.  This means that as soon as they walk in your door,  you ‘have to be careful with them’.

Sometimes this is referred to as the ‘Foreseeability Test’.

If you end up in court as a result of someone getting injured in your facility, the judge will ask you – could you have foreseen that this was going to happen?  If the answer is ‘yes’ then that means you owed that person a duty of care.

So the answer is ‘yes’ to the first of the 4-point test for negligence (see blog #4).  Three more tests to go!

What it means:  You have to think through your programs and ask the question – what can foreseeably go wrong?

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