Carmarthenshire County Council v Lewis

CASE SUMMARY

Defendant (Appellant), a Local Authority employed a teacher who left a 4-year-old child alone for about ten minutes while she did other things. The boy wandered out into the road causing a driver to swerve and hit a lamp post and die. The lorry driver was killed and his widow (Plaintiff & Respondent) sued the education authority for negligence.
JUDGEMENT

The court held that the appellants had been negligent and that this negligence had foreseeably caused the accident. The next question was whether they had a duty to people involved in the accident. The House of Lords held that the appellants did owe a duty of care to him and seemed to use a foreseeability test.

Rationale
The standard of care which the law demands is the standard which an ordinarily prudent man or woman would observe in all the circumstances in the case. Education authorities are bound to keep children under constant supervision throughout every moment of their attendance at school, which it demands a higher standard of care than the ordinary prudent schoolmaster or mistress. For a mother, there is no absolute duty of keeping a constant watch on the children, there is only a duty not to be negligent, a mother is not negligent unless she fails to do something that a prudent or reasonable mother in her position have been able to do and would have done.

Factors in determining the scope of duty of school authority towards pupil

Forseeability that the child will wander out from the school area
Its natural that the wrongdoer (teacher) never thought that the children would wander out to the lane as theyre all well trained and obedient child who had been in school for a year. However, it varies based on circumstances of each cases.

Location of the education center

Defendant maintain a nursery and infant school in premises adjoining a highway in a town, with such places that might exposed to frequent cars, school authorities are under a duty to take care that children themselves neither become involved in nor cause a traffic accident.

Precaution taken by the school authority

What precautions would have been practicable and what precautions would have been reasonable in any particular case must depend on a great variety of circumstances. In this case, the reasonable precaution is to have the gate closed which is not done by them. Miss Morgan negligent in failure to lock the gate that has the access to the lane, which resulted in the child wandered out and causing injury to the deceased. In this case, its very easy to prevent them from escaping to the lane, by locking the gate, which is not done by them.

Supervision on children
Child at such young age of 4, their actions are unpredictable. Hence, minor emergencies would have occurred, despite how careful the mistresses is. The mistresses fail to find out an alternative to make sure that the situation is under her control. Proper supervision is failed to impose into the said child, which is the lack of safeguards against children escaping through doors and gateways on to the street.

Forseeability that the child will cause harm to others

Here, the death of lorry driver, which is the plaintiffs husband Its reasonably forseeable that a childs action might cause injury to others. Injury to the driver of a vehicle in the street might be forseeable as a possible consequence of the escape of the child. If its not reasonably forseeable, it must be established that the risk of it is so small that a reasonable man would feel justified in disregarding it. It was a prima facie indication that theres a negligence on the part of those who in charge of the child.