Critically Evaluate And Examine The Principles By Which The Irish Courts: Tort Law Essay, UCC, Ireland

QUESTIONS

Medical negligence

1. Critically evaluate and examine the principles by which the Irish courts determine whether or not a medical practitioner is liable for negligence in the context of diagnosis and treatment.  Your answer should include an analysis of the policy tensions and considerations underlying these principles.

2. Drawing on relevant jurisprudence, critically evaluate the Irish courts’ approach to the duty of a medical practitioner to warn a patient of the risks involved in a proposed course of treatment and drawing on relevant jurisprudence, critically evaluate the approach adopted by the Irish courts in actions for damages for negligently inflicted psychiatric injury.

3. In Healy v Buckley [2015] IECA 251, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the test to be adopted by the court, as to what risks ought to be disclosed to a patient before an operation, was “the reasonable patient test”. Trace the evolution of the Irish jurisprudence on the scope of a doctor’s duty to warn a patient of the risks inherent in a proposed treatment. Your answer should include a critical assessment of “the reasonable patient test”.

Critically evaluate the current law governing the award of damages for defamation in IrelandYour answer should include a consideration of how the problem of excessively high jury awards for defamation might be addressed, evaluate the extent to which the law of defamation in Ireland protects against disproportionate awards of damages for defamation and critically examine the extent to which the Defamation Act 2009 reduces the scope for juries to make excessively high awards of damages for defamation.

Nuisance

In University College Cork v Electricity Supply Board [2015] IEHC 598, Barrett J confirmed that: If alleged nuisance involves interference with the ordinary comfort and enjoyment of the plaintiff’s property, the plaintiff’s evidence must show sensible personal discomfort, including injurious affection of the nerves/senses of such nature as would materially diminish the comfort and enjoyment of, or cause annoyance to, a reasonable man accustomed to living in the same locality. Discuss how the Irish courts assess whether the defendant’s conduct is “unreasonable” in the context of action in private nuisance. And drawing on relevant jurisprudence, critically evaluate the principles applied by the Irish courts to determine whether or not an interference with the use and enjoyment of the plaintiff’s land amounts to a nuisance.

Occupiers Liability

Writing in the (2005/6) Quarterly Review of Tort Law, Binchy expressed the view that recreational users “are not treated very generously” under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1995. Drawing on the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1995 and relevant jurisprudence, critically evaluate the law governing an occupier’s liability to a recreational user injured on his/her premises with reference to Binchy’s statement and critically evaluate the Irish courts’ approach to claims brought by recreational users under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1995.