Case Reports

Sydney Water Corporation v Turano [2009] HCA 42

In Sydney Water Corporation v Turano [2009] HCA 42 (13 October 2009) a strong High Court (French CJ, Hayne, Crennan, and Bell JJ) considered issues of “reasonable foreseeability” and the lack of control over land, in relation to the duty of care of 2 statutory authorities where, 20 years after installation of a drain, a falling tree, on adjacent land, caused death and injury. The court said, at paragraph 45:

"Reasonable foreseeability of the class of injury is an essential condition of the existence of a legal obligation to take care for the benefit of another[49]. The concept is relevant at each of the three, related, stages of the analysis of liability in negligence: the existence and scope of a duty of care, breach of the duty, and remoteness of damage. ........ It remains, as Gleeson CJ observed in Tame v New South Wales[52], that the concept is to be understood and applied with due regard to the consideration that, in the context of the issue as to duty of care, it is bound up with the question of whether it is reasonable to require a person to have in contemplation the risk of injury that has eventuated."