Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Law - Essay Example These damages can be physical injuries, damage to property, and pure economic loss. The pure economic loss does not necessarily have to be with the presence of physical loss and damage to property. Sometimes there are losses that are purely economic and are caused by the breach of a duty of care. The duties of care that result in pure economic loss are mostly related to the business scenarios where the loss may occur in the form of economic for the business or for any specific employee (Edwards, 2008, 357). In one scenario, because of the power cut the business had to stop their production and was forced to shut down their factory temporarily. In this scenario, the loss was purely economic as the business claimed for the loss of profit that they could have gained in the time period when the factory was shut down. The courts held that this loss was neither calculable nor recoverable. The heads of the factory had a duty of care towards the business to make sure that power supply is pro vided to the factory so that no damage to property or economic loss can occur. In another scenario, if the business has provided the employees with the damaged or defected equipment and during the working hours, they get injured due to the fault of the equipment, the business will be held liable for breaching their duty of care towards the employees to provide them safety at work, unless the work is risky or the risk is reasonably foreseeable. Under the principles of negligence, the business will have to compensate the physical injury of the employee. And the employees can also claim for economic loss by claiming for the absence at work because of which they couldn’t earn. The courts will also order the business to compensate to those losses (Okrent, 2009, 58). The defense that the business can use in the case when there is a physical injury is contributory negligence. This is a common law defense which stated that anyone who was partly responsible for the harm done to them c ould not recover in tort. In the business scenario where the equipment provided was damaged and moreover, the employee worked with it in an improper way which caused the injury, the employee will be considered contributory negligent and no liability will be imposed on the business. To make sure that contributory negligence has taken place, it is important to first find out whether the defendant was negligent or not. Thus, it was seen that in many cases the claimant’s behavior was negligent which contributed to the accident and the damages (Statsky, 2011, 131). Volenti non fit injuria is also a defense which can be used in the business scenarios. This Latin phrase means ‘no injury can be done to a willing person’. It describes a defense which applies where the claimant has in some way consented to what was done by the defendant, on the basis that in giving consent the claimant was voluntarily taking the risk of harm. This applies in many business scenarios where t he jobs are mostly risky and may need technical expertise. For these jobs, the employees should voluntarily consent to the acceptance of the risk that will be throughout their job. Thus, this defense can be used by the businesses where consent can be proven (Barnes, Best, 2007, 151). Applying elements of vicarious liability to business scenarios: Vicarious liability occurs where