When claiming compensation as a result of an accident that was not your fault, you might hear the phrase “duty of care” and wonder what is a duty of care. Throughout this guide, we explain what it means when a third party owes you a duty of care.
We look at a few areas in which a third party owes this legal obligation. To help illustrate this, we provide a few examples of how this duty can be breached and the consequences of such a breach. Additionally, we provide information about how you could be compensated for injuries that you sustained because of a breach. We conclude with our penultimate section about how one of the personal injury solicitors from our panel can help you on a No Win No Fee basis.
We hope you enjoy this guide, and should you have any questions, please call for a free, no-obligation consultation using the details below.
- Phone: 0333 000 0729
- Online: Contact Us
- Live chat available
Select A Section
- What Is A Duty Of Care?
- What Is An Employer’s Duty Of Care?
- Do Road Users Have A Duty Of Care?
- Is There A Duty Of Care For Public Places?
- Do Medical Professionals Have A Duty Of Care?
- How Do I Know If I Can Claim Compensation?
- More Useful Resources About How To Claim Compensation
What Is A Duty Of Care?
The phrase ‘duty of care’ is one that is heard a lot. However, you may not know what it means. So, ‘what is a duty of care?’.
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that owed from one party to another. It is imposed on organisations or individuals. It requires adherence to a reasonable standard of care to avoid careless acts that could, foreseeably, result in the other party being harmed in any way.
This duty is owed in certain circumstances in everyday life, including:
- While in the workplace.
- On the roads.
- Using public spaces.
- Medical settings.
If a breach in this duty should occur, you could suffer an injury or other harm that you would have otherwise. In these cases, you could be eligible for compensation. Please get in touch to find out more.
What Is An Employer’s Duty Of Care?
The duty of care that an employer owes to their workforce is set out in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HASAWA). This legislation states that your employer must take reasonably practicable steps to ensure the health and safety of their employees while at work. As part of this duty, employers must adhere to other pieces of relevant health and safety legislation.
Employer negligence occurs if they breach this duty and that breach causes an accident at work that results in injuries. To help illustrate, ‘what is a duty of care at work?’ we look at a few examples of when this legal obligation could be breached:
- Failing to provide sufficient training. Your employer has asked you to move some boxes but failed to provide you with manual handling training, which has resulted in a shoulder injury.
- Providing defective equipment: If a risk assessment identified the need for personal protective equipment (PPE) and your employer failed to provide it. For example, if you require eye protection while carrying out work duties and this was not provided, resulting in an eye injury, then negligence occured.
- Inadequate lighting could cause employees to fall down a set of stairs, resulting in an accident causing a forearm fracture.
If you believe your duty of care has been breached at work and has resulted in you becoming injured, please contact Legal Helpline to discuss the matter further.
Do Road Users Have A Duty Of Care?
Everyone using the roads (vehicle drivers, motorcycle riders, cyclists and pedestrians) must navigate in a safe manner so as to avoid causing themselves and others damage. This is the duty of care road users owe. To ensure compliance with this, everyone on the roads needs to adhere to The Highway Code and The Road Traffic Act 1988. Should the duty of care be breached by another driver, resulting in an injury, then a road traffic accident claim could be made. Examples of road users breaching their duty of care:
- Drivers driving recklessly, under the influence of drink and/or drugs. They could drive onto the pavement, resulting in a pedestrian sustaining a serious injury.
- A driver failing to stop, colliding with a vehicle in front, resulting in a whiplash injury.
- Speeding through a red light, which causes a crash, resulting in a passenger injury.
If you have suffered an injury in a road traffic accident that was not your fault, contact our advisors for a free, no-obligation chat and claim assessment.
Is There A Duty Of Care For Public Places?
While you are out and about using public spaces, including those run by the council and businesses, the person or organisation in charge of that space must ensure your reasonable safety while you are lawfully on that premises. This is the duty of care owed by occupiers to members of the public as set out in the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957. If you sustained injuries because a breach of this duty of care occurs, you could be eligible to make a public liability claim.
Examples of breaches in this duty in public places include:
- A restaurant is notified of a spillage but fail to take action to clean it or put a wet floor sign up. You sustain a broken wrist in a slip, trip and fall.
- The council fail to repair broken paving tiles leading to sustaining a fractured ankle in a pavement accident.
- A busy supermarket has left packaging in the centre of an aisle. You suffer an elbow injury when tripping over it whilst trying to get around trolleys.
Please get in touch to discuss what led to your injuries in a public place. You may have valid grounds to launch a personal injury claim.
Do Medical Professionals Have A Duty Of Care?
Patients in a clinical setting are automatically owed a duty of care by the medical professionals that agree to provide them with treatment. This means that whilst in a medical setting, you should be given the correct standard of care.
Ways in which medical professionals are expected to provide a standard of care include ensuring their patients are their first concern, treating colleagues with respect, and protecting the health of patients and the public.
A failure to uphold this duty of care could result in a patient suffering from harm that would have been avoided otherwise. If you suffered unnecessary harm because a medical professional breached their duty of care, you could be eligible to make a medical negligence claim.
Examples of medical negligence could include:
- Prescribing a medication to a patient that has a known allergy to ingredients in it. If the patient then takes this and suffers an allergic reaction, medical negligence has occurred.
- Performing unnecessary surgery, which leaves the original condition untreated, while causing avoidable pain and suffering.
- A GP failing to consider all the symptoms that a patient has described to them resulting in a misdiagnosis.
Below are some resources that can further explain the standard of care owed as well as good medical practice for a few different types of healthcare professionals:
Call us today to discuss the incident that resulted in suffering unnecessarily. You could be eligible for compensation.
How Do I Know If I Can Claim Compensation?
In order for you to find out if you can claim compensation, you should call the free advice line for a no-obligation consultation. We can evaluate your claim and if it seems valid, you could be connected to a specialist solicitor from our panel.
The benefits of using our panel are:
- They have decades of experience in personal injury and medical negligence compensation claims.
- Extensive expertise in explaining what is a duty of care.
- Assistance with collecting evidence.
- Arrange medical appointments.
- Complete court documents and ensure everything is filed on time and in full.
The solicitors on our panel can do all of this and more for you without taking any upfront or ongoing fees for their work. This is because they work with their clients under a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA), which is a kind of No Win No Fee arrangement.
If your claim is successful, a small success fee, legally capped at a percentage, will be deducted from your compensation. You won’t be required to pay this fee if your claim is unsuccessful.
If you would like to discuss the guide or what is a duty of care in more detail, please call us at the contact details below:
- Phone: 0333 000 0729
- Online: Contact Us
- Live chat available
More Useful Resources About How To Claim Compensation
Learn more about the duty of care in the resources below:
- Our legal glossary offers information about some of the terms you might come across when claiming compensation.
- Learn about how compensation is calculated for Car Accident Claims.
- Guidance on how to include Loss Of Earnings as a part of your personal injury claim.
Further resources
- Guidance on performing first aid from the NHS.
- A workers guide to health and safety published by the Health and Safety Executive.
- An overview of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) from the government.
We hope we have answered your question, ‘What is a duty of care?’. Please get in touch if a duty of care that was owed to you caused you to suffer injuries when breached.
