The Case of Eron Broughton v Competitive Foods Pty Ltd - Essay Example

Eron Broughton v. Competitive Foods Pty Ltd Likelihood of a Second-Instance Appeal to the High Court of Australia Being Decided in Favour of the Defendants [Respondents] Background The case of Eron Broughton v Competitive Foods Pty Ltd1 was first tried by his Honour Judge Black QC. It involved the plaintiff (Eron Broughton) and three other young men who, upon allegedly finding themselves in danger of bodily harm from another group of men who were threatening them with knives outside a restaurant establishment called Hungry Jack's, decided to take shelter therein. They asked the security guard on duty if they could remain inside and if he could call the police for them, but were cast out. Subsequently, Mr. Broughton sustained multiple stab wounds that turned out to be life-threatening. Mr. Broughton went through a long physical recovery and ensuing psychological trauma due to the incident. Judge Black ruled against the plaintiff, sustaining that the defendants had no duty of care in that particular case as the plaintiff was on private property, whose owner or representative (in this case the security guard) was entitled to order him to leave. Then the plaintiff proceeded in filing an appeal in the first instance with the New South Wales Court of Appeal, which was also unsuccessful. Honourable Justices Brownie, Hodgson, and Handley unanimously decided in favour of the respondents, sustaining the reasons behind Judge Black's judgment and also making the distinction between "duty of care" and "Good Samaritan" cases. Duty of care entails "one person [having] the care of another, such as husbands and wives, parents and persons in loco parentus who have the care and custody of infant children, hospitals and patients, prison authorities and prisoners and so on" (Broughton v Competitive Foods Australia Pty Ltd & Ors2). We could say, on the other hand, that being a Good Samaritan involves assisting another person of one's own accord, without the existence of a special relationship based on duty of care, or as put in Donoghue v Stevenson,3 "The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes, in law, you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer's question "Who is my neighbour" receives a restricted reply." In this case the appellant, far from being considered a neighbour, was deemed to be a potential trespasser, and the security guard's duty of care was owed to his employer and the customers inside the premises he was hired to guard. Points in Favour of the Respondents in Case of a Second-Instance Appeal to the HCA Should Mr. Broughton be given leave to file a second appeal, this time to the High Court of Australia, he would very likely lose again. The High Court would rule in favour of the respondents and dismiss the appeal due to the following legal principles and reasons: 1) Australia's common law does not generally allow superior courts to act without regard to binding precedent, with the exception of the High Court of Australia. Even so, in the HCA the trend has also historically been to consider ratio decidendi based on the principle of stare decisis, despite the fact that it is not necessarily bound by its previous decisions. Therefore, it follows that the High Court of Australia would be likely to rule on Mr. Broughton's appeal based on careful consideration of what has motivated its decisions in the past on similar cases. Granted, there are few similar cases within the realm of the High Court, or even within Australia itself, but one that could be considered comparable is the strange case of Dianne Maree Hackshaw v. George Shaw4. It, too, involves the matter of injuries and of trespassing, albeit in a more outright manner. Shaw was working on a farm that had a gasoline dispenser on the property. He started to notice that the levels of gasoline were dropping and suspected that someone was stealing it. He took several precautions to keep it from getting stolen again, but nothing worked. After calling the police on several occasions and finally being told that he needed to provide evidence to them so that they could catch the thief, Mr. Shaw decided to stake out the culprit at night. On one of those nights, in the company of his wife, he saw a car approach. The driver, a Mr. Cox, turned the headlights of the vehicle off at a certain distance from the fuel pump, came up to a stop beside it, and got out. Mr. Shaw fired a shot at the car's engine and told Mr. Cox to leave the premises. Mr. Cox was heading back towards the car when Mr. Shaw fired a second shot that hit the front passenger door of the vehicle, injuring a sixteen year old girl (Dianne Maree Hackshaw) who was at this point crouched down inside, trying to hide herself. Mr. Shaw sustained that he had looked at the car to make sure no one was inside, but at the same time admitted that it was dark and that he could not see clearly. Ms. Hackshaw sustained that she had stepped out of the vehicle as soon as Mr. Cox got out of the car and was standing next to it when Mr. Shaw fired, but Mr. Shaw and his wife said that only Mr. Cox had left the vehicle and that they were totally unaware of the presence of Ms. Hackshaw. As it turned out, Mr. Cox had been stealing gasoline and the car he was driving that night was stolen. Ms. Hackshaw claimed ignorance of both these facts. The HCA ruled that the appeal filed by Ms. Hackshaw against Mr. Shaw be allowed with costs, on the grounds that Mr. Shaw did not exercise proper duty of care in the use of a lethal weapon but, on the contrary, was manifesting "ultra-hazardous" behaviour, also going beyond the boundaries of merely collecting evidence that he could present to the police. The decision considered such issues as when a person can be considered a trespasser, the degree of duty of care owed to a trespasser, and to what degree a reasonable man should have at lease suspected that there was someone else inside the car. On the matter of defining a trespasser, in the Hackshaw case, one of the Honourable Judges who tried the case, Judge Deane, stated that "A trespasser may be a burglar, a traveller in difficulty, a person on an errand of mercy, a person who walks on another's land believing it to be his own, a person who honestly follows a mistaken direction or accepts an unauthorized invitation, a person who cannot see or a child who cannot understand."5 This is fuzzy ground, at best. Things such as foreseeability, proximity, and the possible status of "neighbour" of persons one comes into contact with are also involved. In any case, we can see that Mr. Broughton's plight was that of a traveller in difficulty, whereas Ms. Hackshaw's was one of a person who accepts an unauthorized invitation, with the added complication that she failed to make her presence known, thereby not enabling the establishment of any relationship between herself and Mr. Shaw, let alone that of trespasser. This placed the burden on Mr. Shaw to have at least suspected her presence at the scene. On the other hand, Mr. Broughton's presence was acknowledged by the security guard but he told Broughton and the three others accompanying him to leave, laying a foundation for establishing them as potential trespassers had they not complied. In the Hackshaw case, there was foreseeability on Mr. Shaw's part of the presence of at least one likely trespasser, there was a proximity established in the guise of an occupant-trespasser relationship, and Ms. Hackshaw's status as a neighbour is arguable. In the Broughton case, there was no foreseeability on the guard's part of the sudden appearance of the young men who were fleeing danger, there was no proximity established, and the "neighbours", if any, in this case would have been Hungry Jack's clientele inside the restaurant at the time, to which the security guard owed duty of care under his employment contract. When forced to make a snap decision, he chose to take steps to make sure that the people inside the restaurant would remain safe. This would most certainly be taken into account upon reviewing past decisions for possible grounds upon which to rule on a second-instance appeal. 2) One of the counts the appellant brought against the respondents was that the security guard prevented him from obtaining police assistance. Although, to my knowledge, there are no prior cases with the HCA that include a charge of this nature, in the United States there were two similar cases: Soldano v O'Daniels6 and Griffith v The Southland Corporation.7 The common denominator in both is that the respective plaintiffs were trying to get a third party to let them make a phone call to the police to diffuse brawls. Both appeals were allowed. In Soldano, his Honour stated that California courts, and those of the USA in general, "had an obligation to continually develop the common law and to change it to meet changing conditions." In Griffith, upon delivering the judgment of the court majority, his Honour said "that the court should not neglect an important opportunity to cultivate and improve Maryland law." Both judges also coincided in determining that all the respondents had been asked to do was to make or allow to make a telephone call, implying that such requests on the part of the appellants in each respective case should have been followed. Two important things to note here: first, in Soldano, Judge Andreen, in proffering his decision, cited an earlier decision identifying factors to be considered in determining whether a duty of care is owed to others. One of those factors was "...the extent of the burden to the defendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care...". Second, in the NSWCA decision, his Honour, Justice Brownie, went on to state: "...the common law of Australia does not permit courts to act in the robust way mentioned in these two cases, without regard to binding precedent, and there is no Australian or New South Wales legislation equivalent to the Californian and Maryland legislation mentioned in Soldano and in Griffith." It is highly likely that the HCA, based on the two latter aspects, would be inclined to decide in favour of a dismissal of the Broughton appeal. 3) Justice Handley of the NSWCA, in his decision on the Broughton appeal, was quoted as saying "A stranger is not obliged to rescue those in peril", "In general the law does not impose legally enforceable duties on one citizen to help another", and "The moral commandment to love one's neighbour is not enforceable by law".8 The reporter also went on to conclude, albeit in the opening line of the article, that "People are under no obligation to rescue strangers in peril." This, in addition to the finding already mentioned that the security guard's first responsibility was towards Hungry Jack's customers and employees, makes for a highly compelling argument for a ruling against Mr. Broughton, should he be allowed to file an appeal with the High Court of Australia. BIBLIOGRAPHY AAP. "Court Clears Way for Rude Samaritans." Sidney Morning Herald 19 May 2005. Fairfax Digital. 31 August 2005. . Broughton v Competitive Foods Australia Pty Ltd & Ors [2005] NSWCA 168 Dianne Maree Hackshaw v. George Shaw [1984] HCA 84; (1984) 155 CLR 614 (11 December 1984) Donoghue (or McAlister) v. Stevenson, [1932] A.C. 532, 1932 S.C.(H.L.) 31 Gibson & Frasier. "How Law is Made - Precedent /Statute Law." Companion Website for Business Law 2005. Pearson Education Australia. 31 August 2005. . Griffith v The Southland Corporation, [1992] A.2d 598. "The Legal Duty of Care - The Law of Torts." 31 August 2005. . Schwartz, Saul. "The Risk of Rescue - The Plight of the Good Samaritan." Search and Rescue Society of British Columbia 24 October 1995. Medi-smart.com. 31 August 2005. < http://medi-smart.com/gslaw-sarbc.htm>. Soldano v O'Daniels, [1983] 190 Cal Rptr 310. Read More