Is there a Duty of Care To Protect Someone From Harm Or Death?

Causing harm and injury to an individual is distinguished in law from failing to protect someone from harm, as a landmark case has illustrated. In this tragic fatal accident case, the police owed no duty to protect road users from accident and injury. The expert injury lawyers at ParrisWhittaker are experienced in representing injury claimants in the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos Island (TCI) and the wider Caribbean region.

Proving negligence

To prove a negligence claim, three things must be proven:

• Duty of care – that the individual (or organisation) owed a duty of care to the injured person
• Breach of duty – that the duty of care was breached
• Caused injury – that the breach of duty of care directly caused the injuries complained of

A duty of care is usually established on the facts, such as a doctor or other health professional carrying out medical treatment or road users owing a duty of care towards other road users.

In general, subject to exceptions, there is no duty of care to actually protect a person from injury. This applies to public authorities as well as individuals.

What happened in this case¹?

A driver skidded on black ice on the road, lost control of his vehicle and rolled into a ditch. He called the emergency services and stood by his car, warning other drivers to slow down before the police arrived.

The driver told the police that the road was icy and dangerous, but once they cleared the debris from the accident site they left the scene in the same icy condition. The police had neither discovered nor inspected the sheet ice on the road.

One hour after the first accident, another driver skidded on the ice and collided with a second vehicle and both drivers (B and T) were killed. T’s widow claimed compensation from the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police on the basis of negligence.

At issue was whether the police owed a duty of care to road users to protect them from harm, because their presence at the scene made the situation worse or because they had assumed a responsibility to protect road users.

No duty of care

The Supreme Court ruled that the police intervention did not give rise to any possible liability in negligence for making matters worse.

While the police have statutory powers and duties to protect the public from harm, a failure to do so, does not (of itself) make the police negligent, and therefore liable to compensate. Also, on the facts the police did not know about the efforts of the first driver to alert other road users of the danger.

The SC accepted the police’s argument that to “give rise to a duty of care, it would be sufficient that the activity of the police as a whole created a danger, ie that the activity of the police as a whole created an unreasonable and reasonably foreseeable risk of physical harm to the victim. Breach of such a duty (ie negligence) would be established by failure to take reasonable steps to remove this risk”. But this was not the situation in this particular set of circumstances.

Furthermore, the SC rejected the claim that this case was within the exceptions to the general rule against there being a duty of care to protect someone from injury. The claimant argued that the police had assumed responsibility to protect T from the source of danger (the black ice); that the police had a special level of control over the black ice; and their police status gave rise to an obligation to protect T from it.

However, there was no communication or interaction between the police who attended the initial scene and those who attended the scene of the fatal accident. It was impossible to find any assumption of responsibility. The police could not be held liable for making matters worse and they owed no general duty of care in this instance.

The outcome – the fatalities themselves and the failure of the widow’s compensation claim – will have been highly distressing (though a claim against the highway authority remains to be determined).

However, the ruling makes clear the limits to which the police (and other public bodies) may be liable for accidents; and reiterates the general principle against a duty of care to protect someone from injury.

How can we help?

Our specialist personal injury lawyers advise injured individuals as well as the families of the victims of fatal accidents. For legal advice and representation from compassionate injury lawyers, contact Jacy Whittaker at ParrisWhittaker here or telephone +1.242.352.6112

1 Tindall v Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police [2024] UKSC 33