The Principal and the Issue of Negligence - Essay Example

In common law, a tort is a civil wrong, performed against an individual and the affected party can sue for un-liquidated damages. Tort comes in many forms, among them defamation, negligence malice, trespass into a person or goods, among others tort. Liability in tort arises from the breach of a duty primarily fixed by law; this duty is towards persons generally and its breach is repressible by and action for un-liquidated damages

Defamation is a publication of a statement, whether written or orally, which tends to lower the reputation of the affected party, in the eyes of a third party. The purpose of the law is to protect the plaintiff’s reputation, and so the statement must be published to a third party, for it to amount to defamation. Therefore, this means that for defamation to occur, a third party must be involved (Best and burner 773). Defamation can be either libel, which is a permanent statement through print media or video, or slander, which is just a spoken form of the word.

Therefore, for someone to claim for damages on defamation, he/ she needs to prove that the defendant’s statement was defamatory, and that that it referred to her/him and that its publication was a malicious act. In our case here, Stanford Engineering, Inc launches an advertisement, claiming that their competitors, Cornell Code Corporation are using their customers, to ‘test their software. This statement is defamatory, since it ruins the reputation of Cornell Ltd, in the eyes of their customers. For Cornell to sue for un-liquidated damages on defamation, they will have to prove that the advert was defamatory. This can be proved by the fact that customers will avoid using their “allegedly untested software’ and shift business to Stanford Corporation. The statement is defamatory to Cornell limited because it ruins the reputation of the company, in the eyes of the current and potential customers.

Cornell Ltd also needs to prove that the defamatory statement referred to them, and this is straightforward because the advert was clearly stating that the plaintiff (Cornell Ltd) was marketing untested software. Moreover, Cornell needs to show that there was malice, in the publication of the statement. The mere fact that Stanford and Cornell's corporations are competitors clearly shows that the main intention of Stanford, in the publication of this advert was to ruin the reputation of their competitors, so that they can win their customers. Publishing false information against a competitor, in order to make them lose customers is malicious.

Flo can sue Dan for negligence, and she can claim damages, but to do that, she needs to show the court that:

A duty of care was owed; a duty of care is owed to those people who can be affected by our actions either directly or indirectly. When Dan was making a delivery, he should have been concerned about the damage that the vehicle could cause to another party, if it was not parked properly. Dan’s action of parking a vehicle can therefore affect another party, so he owed his neighbors a duty of care. If Dan had parked the vehicle properly, it would not have created the series of events that eventually caused injuries to Flo. She also needs to show that the duty of care was breached. By Dan carelessly forgetting to set the parking brake, he breached his duty of care, as he did not take the necessary precaution to protect his neighbors from injury. A neighbor is somebody who can be affected directly or indirectly by our actions.

In conclusion, Flo needs to show that she suffered damages out of Dan’s actions. If Dan had set the brakes the delivery truck would not have rolled back, and so it would not have crashed into a nearby gas station pump, and consequentially, the crane would not have injured Flo.