Kenneth Warner considers the scope of an assumed duty of care
The law of negligence proceeds on the basic premise that in conducting activities we owe a duty to take reasonable care to avoid causing harm to those who are foreseeably affected by our acts or omissions.
Having said that, the law allows for the presumption that persons of mature age and sound intellectual ability will exercise ordinary care for their own welfare, in their everyday lives. The common law has never recognised a general duty of care to “go to the rescue” of another person who is seen to be in some way acting to his or her own detriment. The case law does admit, however, of the much more limited circumstance, where a duty arises on the basis that a defendant has in some way or other assumed a duty of care towards the plaintiff. In this exceptional circumstance, a significant failure on the defendant’s part can amount to a breach of duty sounding in damages in tort, despite the immediate vehicle of the plaintiff’s harm being the plaintiff’s own actions. In that
