Relationships

• Author: Philip H. Osborne
• Pages: 389-399

A. Introduction

Tort law does not operate in a legal vacuum. There are other important

areas of private and public law which control the relationship of per-

sons to one another and to private and public institutions. The conven-

tional divisions and classifications of the legal system inevitably give

rise to interrelationships and overlap between discrete areas of the law

which need to be resolved. These difficulties are exacerbated by the fact

that there are often no sharp and distinct boundaries between the var-

ious regimes of responsibility. At the margins they tend to shade the

one into the other, each using similar concepts to resolve conflicts that

arise between litigants. In this chapter the reader is alerted in a sum-

mary way to some of the relational issues arising in the field of tort law

and the general principles that bear on those issues. In particular, con-

sideration is given to the private law regimes of contract law, fiduciary

law, and the law of restitution and the public law constitutional princi-

ples found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

B. Private Law

Many civil obligations arise from the relationships between people.

Tortious obligations of reasonable care arise from the relationships of

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Relationships

chapter 8