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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.
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.