Assumption of Responsibility: Four Questions

Speaker: Professor Donal Nolan (Oxford University)

About this lecture:

Although the assumption of responsibility concept pervades the English law of negligence, its meaning remains hazy and its significance contested. While the courts employ the language of assumption of responsibility on a regular basis, no clear judicial definition of it has emerged. And commentators are divided as to whether assumption of responsibility is a distinct ground on which liability is imposed, or merely a foil for policy arguments ­– or for another, more general, test for the recognition of duties of care. Matters are complicated by the fact that assumption of responsibility does not fit neatly within the orthodox categories of ‘tort’ and ‘contract’, but hovers uncertainly between the two.

The aim of this lecture is to try to bring some clarity to the controversies surrounding assumption of responsibility. Four questions frame the analysis. What does assumption of responsibility mean? When does it matter? Why do we need it? And where does it belong? The answers to some of these questions are necessarily tentative, since the case law is diffuse and sometimes inconsistent. Nevertheless, at least one conclusion should become clear, namely that assumption of responsibility represents a distinctive and substantive basis for imposing negligence liability.

About the speaker:

Donal Nolan is Professor of Private Law in the University of Oxford and Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford. He was previously a Lecturer in Law at King’s College London, and has taught tort, contract, commercial law, international trade law and restitution. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne, a founding member of the World Tort Law Society, and an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Professor Nolan’s research is focused primarily on the law of tort, and in particular on the law of negligence, the law of private nuisance and the interface between tort law and public law. He has recently completed a major empirical study of the operation of the contributory negligence doctrine with Professor James Goudkamp, which has generated two books: Contributory Negligence: Principles and Practice (OUP, 2018) and Contributory Negligence in the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2019, forthcoming).

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