Abstract

The factual component of the duty of care inquiry—that harm to the claimant as a result of the defendant’s conduct was reasonably foreseeable by the defendant—has been entrenched in English law since Donoghue v Stevenson. Both indigenous and comparative (specifically South African) evidence suggests that Lord Atkin’s formulation of the duty of care test was influenced by a particular fragment contained in Title 9.2 of Justinian’s Digest, ‘On the lex Aquilia’. Interrogation of the foreseeability principle in its original setting shows, however, that its role there was rather circumscribed. Derived perhaps from the account of wrongdoing offered by Aristotle, for whom the fact that harm had occurred contrary to expectation (paralogos) served to demonstrate that it had been unintentionally inflicted, in the context of Roman culpa foreseeability functioned as a technique for determining the avoidability of the harm—essentially a causal inquiry. This historical insight serves to illuminate the limits of foreseeability in the context of the modern test for duty of care. As a principle which generates liability, it may be that reasonable foreseeability cannot bear the normative weight assigned to it. Thus the history of foreseeability furnishes the material for a further critique of the duty concept, adding an historical dimension to contemporary calls to abandon the factual component of the duty of care entirely.

中文翻译：

---

可预见性的历史

摘要

自从Donoghue诉Stevenson案以来，英国法律已经确立了谨慎调查责任的事实组成部分，即被告人可以合理预见到由于被告人的行为对索赔人造成的损害。土著证据和比较证据（特别是南非）都表明，阿特金勋爵对照护义务的表述受到《贾斯汀尼丁文摘》第9.2章“论阿奎利亚论”中一个特定片段的影响。但是，对可预见性原则在其原始环境中的询问表明，它在其中的作用相当有限。也许源于亚里斯多德（Aristotle）提出的过错作法，对他们造成伤害的事实与预期相违背（paralogos）用来证明它是无意间造成的，在罗马教廷的可预见性的背景下，它起着确定可避免损害的技术的作用-本质上是因果关系的探究。这种历史性的洞察力有助于阐明在现代谨慎义务测试中可预见性的局限性。作为产生责任的原则，合理的可预见性可能无法承担分配给它的规范权重。因此，可预见性的历史为对责任概念的进一步批判提供了材料，为当代的呼吁增加了历史意义，从而完全放弃了照顾义务的事实组成部分。