Relationships

• Author: Philip H. Osborne
• Profession: Faculty of Law. The University of Manitoba
• Pages: 429-442

429

CHA PTER 8

R EL AT IONSHIPS

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 classif‌icat ions of the legal system i nevitably 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 shar p and distinct boundarie s between the

various 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 t he reader is aler ted 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 i ssues. In particul ar, con-

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

law, the law of restitution, and the action for breach of conf‌idence and

the public law constitutional principles found in the Cana dian Charter

of Rights and Freedoms.

B. PRIVATE LAW

Many civil obligations ar ise from the relat ionships between people.

Tortious obligations of reasonable ca re ari se from the relationships of