John owned a Ford truck with a snowplow attached. John's best friend Mary asked him to plow the snow from her driveway, which he did. John started salting the driveway in order to melt the remaining ice, but he was distracted that day because his favorite football team was playing. He forgot to salt the walkway between Mary's house and her vehicle in the driveway. Later, Mary slipped on the walkway, severely injuring her hip.

Discuss whether John can be successfully sued for negligence by Mary. You must explicitly reference each of the four elements of negligence. Further, when doing the Duty of Care analysis, you should specifically reference to the three-part test in a Duty of Care analysis, and explain whether John owes Mary a duty of care.

 

2. Jacqueline becomes drunk and drives her car home. She forgets to put her vehicle in "Park" and she stumbles inside her house. Greg, Jacqueline's neighbor, notices the car moving before being stopped by the street curb. Greg later sues Jacqueline for negligence. Will this lawsuit succeed? Why or why not?

 

3. Macy is a recreational snowmobile user. She tends to ride her snowmobiles hard, preferring to take them over cliffs for thrills. Her last snowmobile irreparably broke when she jumped it over a 10-metre cliff. She thought it an excellent opportunity to buy a new snowmobile.

She went to a snowmobile shop named Mike's Snowmobiles that sells a wide variety of snowmobiles. Macy said to the snowmobile salesperson, "I'm looking for a new sled that can handle some pretty awesome jumps. I like riding them over huge cliffs because it's fun!" The salesperson replied, "it sounds like you're looking for this Polaris 9500 model. The shocks on this thing are incredible. Polaris really knocked it out of the park with this one!"

Macy replied, "Thanks! That's all I need to know. I'll take it." She fueled the snowmobile and got a different shop, Jane's Repairs, to service it and look over the snowmobile for defects. The shop serviced the snowmobile and was unable to identify any defects with it.

Macy went to ride her snowmobile the next day. Unfortunately, when she tried to take it over a 5-metre "warm-up" cliff, the snowmobile had a defect which caused one of the skis on the snowmobile to shatter under pressure. Upon Macy's landing, the ski on the snowmobile shattered and Macy was ejected from the snowmobile, causing her to hit a tree and break her arm.

Later, it was discovered from Polaris internal documents that Polaris knew about this defect in some of their snowmobiles before Macy's injury, but did not issue a recall or notice of any kind because "it would be expensive to order a recall. Only 1 in 1,000 snowmobiles have this defect!"

Macy is a welder by trade, and so was forced to take 6 months off work while she recovered from her injury.

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Discuss whether a) Polaris, b) Mike's Snowmobiles, and c) Jane's Repairs can be successfully sued for negligence by Macy. You must explicitly reference each of the four elements of negligence.

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Note: It is possible you do not have enough information to make a determination. If this is the case, please explicitly state what information you are missing to answer the question.

EDIT: You may find it helpful to answer the question with a chart like this:

	Polaris	Mike's Snowmobiles	Jane's Repairs
a) Duty of Care
b) Breach of the Duty
c) Causation
d) Damages

You can answer each part with a bullet point and offer a brief conclusion at the end.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Johns Negligence a Duty of Care John owed a duty of care to Mary as he voluntarily undertook the task of plowing her driveway which created a duty to act with reasonable care to avoid foreseeable ha... View the full answer