Company Director's Duty of Care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Company Director's Duty of Care - Essay Example -Should maintain sufficient knowledge of business 3) Reliance on Others -A director is not liable for the acts of co-directors or Company officers solely by virtue of his position. -A director is entitled to rely on a subordinate "put in a position of charge for the express purpose of attending to the detail of management" -Directors cannot absolve themselves entirely of their responsibility by delegation to others. "In fixing the director's duty of care and skill in the process of supervising the activities of management, UK law has sought to avoid the pitfalls of a purely objective and a purely subjective test, preferring to combine them." In the statement, the word "pitfalls" refer to various limitations of human behavior that in effect lead to mistakes. In the case of top level executives handling corporations and groups of people, these mistakes would tantamount to management errors and negligence, either in judgment or in the performance of one's duties and responsibilities. So as to tackle and address human factors in workplace settings, peoples' capabilities and limitations must first be understood. The modern working environment is very different to the settings that humans have evolved to deal with. As it is inevitable that errors will be committed, whether consciously or unconsciously, the focus of error management is placed on reducing the chance of these errors occurring and on minimising the impact of any errors that do occur (Chase & Simon, 1973; Tulving, 1979). Duty of care in English law In tort, there can be no liability in negligence unless the claimant establishes both that he or she was owed a duty of care by the defendant, and that there has been a breach of that duty (Buckley, 2005; Booth & Squires, 2006). The recurrent... In the statement, the word â€Å"pitfalls† refer to various limitations of human behavior that in effect leads to mistakes. In the case of top-level executives handling corporations and groups of people, these mistakes would tantamount to management errors and negligence, either in judgment or in the performance of one’s duties and responsibilities.So as to tackle and address human factors in workplace settings, peoples’ capabilities and limitations must first be understood. The modern working environment is very different to the settings that humans have evolved to deal with. As it is inevitable that errors will be committed, whether consciously or unconsciously, the focus of error management is placed on reducing the chance of these errors occurring and on minimising the impact of any errors that do occur (Chase & Simon, 1973; Tulving, 1979).The duty of care in English law  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In tort, there can be no liability in negligence unless the claimant establishes both that he or she was owed a duty of care by the defendant, and that there has been a breach of that duty (Buckley, 2005; Booth & Squires, 2006).The recurrent dilemma for the court in every situation has been to ascertain and decide whether a duty of care was owed and, if so, what its scope would be. The first judicial approach is to identify specific and distinctive situations in which a duty would exist. In Donoghue v Stevenson (1932) AC 562, Lord Atkin produced what came to be recognized as a ground-breaking statement of principle.