Negligence In Law

Negligence is generally defined as failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonable prudent person would have exercised in a similar situation any conduct that falls below the legal standard established to protect others against unreasonable risk of harm except for conduct that it intentionally or willfully disregard others. It is well established that for a claim in negligence to succeed, plaintiff must prove that defendant owes him a duly of care and was in breach of that duty.
What is duty of care?
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation which imposes on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with in action in negligence. The principle behind duty of care is that, you have an obligation to avoid acts or omissions which could be reasonably foreseen to injure or harm other people. This means you must anticipate risk for your clients and take care to prevent them coming to harm.
In Heritage Bank $ Ors V. Percy Okorie (2017) LPELR- 420 10 (CA), the respondent was a customer of the 1st appellant. He opened a domiciliary account with the 1st appellant which is a commercial bank. He deposited the sum of $2,400 dollars into the account on 1/12/10. There was condition precedent for the opening of the account. It was that he would be allowed to transfer $2,300 dollars from the said account to United States of America for payment for goods bought from a company, public surplus. The money was not transferred and therefore on 8/12/2010 he sought to withdraw his money from the bank. As a result of the failure of the bank to transfer the money, the respondent claimed to have suffered loss financially as he was blacklisted from trading with public surplus. The trial judge held that the bank was negligent. The court of appeal held that the judgment of the lower court is valid.
A bank has a duty to exercise reasonable care and skill including interpret, ascertaining and acting in accordance with the instructions of the customer. See Abanelo V. Union Bank of Nigeria (2000) S.C (PT1) 243. In the above case, the appellant claimed that the respondent filled a wrong form, that was why a transfer for which service fee was deducted was not affected. I want to state clearly that it was an act of negligence on the part of the defendants/appellants for a customer to be misled into filling a wrong form which aborted the transfer of the said $2,400 dollars. Obviously, if reasonable care had been taken by the defendant Appellant, the right form would have been issued.
For an action in negligence to succeed, the plaintiff must establish three essential ingredients;
1. The existence of a duty to take care owed to the complainant by the defendant.
2. The failure to attain the standard of care prescribed by law.
3. Damages suffered by the plaintiff or the complainant which is casually connected with the brech of duty to care.

Nkechi Bright-Ewere