Dornan v Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland
| Jurisdiction | Northern Ireland |
| Judgment Date | 01 January 1993 |
| Date | 01 January 1993 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Northern Ireland) |
- Common duty of care - Child falling from tree and sustaining injuries - Whether occupier breaching common duty of care by failing to ensure that tree unclimbable - Whether greater resources of occupier imposing higher duty of care - Occupiers' Liability Act (Northern Ireland), 1957, s. 2.
On 19 June, 1983, the plaintiff, a six-year old boy, fell from a tree in a park owned and occupied by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland (the department) sustaining serious head injuries. Proceedings were brought on his behalf against the department on the grounds that it had breached its common duty of care, which it owed to the plaintiff under s. 2 of the Occupiers' Liability Act (Northern Ireland), 1957, by failing to take steps to ensure that the tree was unclimbable. At the trial it was found that the department had the means of knowing that children regularly played around the trees in the park and were accustomed to climb them and that the configuration of the branches was such that quite young children were able to climb the trees. It was further found that there were no rotten or dangerous branches on the tree from which the plaintiff had fallen and there were no features about it which would give the appearance of it being normally strong and safe when it was in fact weak and dangerous so that there was no question that the tree had presented a trap to the plaintiff. Carswell J. dismissed the action and entered judgment in favour of the department holding, inter alia, that even if the risk of falling out of the tree was one which the plaintiff might have failed to appreciate, the department had not acted unreasonably by failing to take steps to make the tree impossible or difficult to climb as it had been entitled to assume - or would have been entitled to assume if it had given consideration to the matter - that the plaintiff's parents would have warned him about the risk, forbidden him to climb the tree if he could not safely be allowed to do so, and supervised him so far as might be necessary to protect him. The plaintiff appealed to the Court of Appeal contending, inter alia, that the fact that the department had the means to supervise its property and the resources to make the trees unclimbable imposed a higher duty of care on the department than would ordinarily be expected from any other occupier of land. Held - (1) The extent of the common duty of care...
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Phillips (Matthew Samuel) (a minor) by Susan Isobel Phillips (his mother and next friend) v South Eastern Education and Library Board
...amusement, was held to be capable of giving rise to liability as a trap. In Doran v Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland [1993] NI 1 Carwell J cited with approval the “classic judgment in Latham v R Johnston and Nephew Limited [1913] 1 KB 398, to which courts have turned in vi......