Picture the exam room. You are three hours into the FLK1 paper, and a single-best-answer question drops a fact pattern on you: a delivery driver clips a cyclist, who is then treated by a careless paramedic, and the injury worsens. Four answer options all sound plausible. Which one wins? If you cannot walk through duty, breach, causation and remoteness in a clean sequence, you will guess — and guessing is exactly how marks leak away on SQE1.
Negligence is the beating heart of Tort Law in FLK1. It shows up constantly, often stitched into questions that also touch employer's liability, occupiers' liability or economic loss. Get the skeleton right and you unlock a large chunk of the paper. Let us build that skeleton properly.
Duty of Care: The Starting Point in SQE1 Tort Law
Every negligence claim begins with one question: did the defendant owe the claimant a duty of care? The modern law traces back to Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] and Lord Atkin's neighbour principle — you must take reasonable care not to injure those closely and directly affected by your acts.
For novel situations, the courts apply the three-stage test from Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990]: reasonable foreseeability of harm, a relationship of proximity, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty. In practice, most SQE1 fact patterns involve an established duty — driver to road user, doctor to patient, employer to employee — so you rarely need the full Caparo dance. But watch for the trigger words. When the examiner introduces something unusual (a public body, a rescuer, a psychiatric injury), that is your cue to reach for the harder tests.
Exam tip: if the duty is obvious, do not waste analysis on it. Identify it in one line and move your energy to breach and causation, which is where the marks usually hide.
Breach of Duty: The Standard of the Reasonable Person
Once a duty exists, ask whether the defendant fell below the standard of the reasonable person. The classic formulation comes from Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks (1856): negligence is doing something the reasonable person would not do, or failing to do something they would do.
The standard is objective, but it flexes with context. A learner driver is judged against the competent driver (Nettleship v Weston [1971]). A professional is judged against a responsible body of opinion in their field — the Bolam test, refined by Bolitho so that the body of opinion must itself be logically defensible. Children are judged against a reasonable child of the same age (Mullin v Richards [1998]).
When weighing whether a defendant breached the standard, the courts balance several factors:
- Likelihood of harm — the greater the risk, the more precaution is required (Bolton v Stone [1951]).
- Seriousness of harm — a known vulnerability raises the bar (Paris v Stepney Borough Council [1951], the one-eyed workman).
- Cost and practicality of precautions — you need not eliminate every conceivable risk (Latimer v AEC [1953]).
- Social utility — emergency services acting under pressure get some latitude (Watt v Hertfordshire County Council [1954]).
SQE1 loves testing this balance. A question might give you a low-cost precaution the defendant ignored, or a high-risk activity with no safeguards. Spot the factor the examiner has planted, and the "best" answer usually reveals itself.
Causation and Remoteness in FLK1 Negligence Questions
This is where candidates lose most marks, because it has two distinct stages that students often blur together.
First, factual causation — the "but for" test from Barnett v Chelsea & Kensington Hospital [1969]. But for the defendant's breach, would the harm have occurred? In Barnett the man would have died of arsenic poisoning anyway, so the hospital's failure to examine him did not cause his death. No factual causation, no liability, however careless the defendant was.
Second, legal causation — did anything break the chain? A novus actus interveniens, such as a wholly unreasonable third-party act or the claimant's own reckless conduct, may sever liability. Careful with medical treatment though: only grossly negligent treatment breaks the chain, so an ordinarily careless paramedic in our opening scenario probably does not (Wright v Cambridge Medical Group). This is exactly the trap the example was built around.
Then comes remoteness. Even where the defendant caused the harm, they are liable only for damage of a reasonably foreseeable type — The Wagon Mound (No 1) [1961]. The exact extent or manner need not be foreseeable (Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963]), and remember the thin skull rule: you take your victim as you find them (Smith v Leech Brain [1962]). If the type of harm is foreseeable, an unexpectedly severe outcome is still recoverable.
Build a mental checklist and run it every time: duty → breach → factual causation → chain intact? → type of harm foreseeable? Answer each in one line before you look at the options. It stops you being seduced by a distractor.
Defences: Contributory Negligence and Consent
A defendant who breached a duty and caused harm can still reduce or defeat the claim. Two defences dominate SQE1.
Contributory negligence under the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 is partial — the court reduces damages by the percentage the claimant was at fault. A cyclist not wearing a helmet, or a passenger not wearing a seatbelt (Froom v Butcher [1976]), typically sees a deduction. Note the language of the questions: contributory negligence never wipes out the claim entirely, it only trims the award.
Volenti non fit injuria — voluntary assumption of risk — is a complete defence, but it is hard to establish. The claimant must have full knowledge of the risk and freely consent to it. It rarely succeeds where the claimant had little real choice, and it is restricted in road traffic cases by statute. If an SQE1 option offers volenti, ask whether the consent was genuinely free and informed before you pick it.
Pure Economic Loss and Psychiatric Harm: The Tricky Corners
Two categories carry special rules, and the examiner knows they catch people out.
Negligence generally does not compensate pure economic loss — financial loss not flowing from physical damage to the claimant's person or property. The main exception is negligent misstatement under Hedley Byrne v Heller [1964], where a special relationship and an assumption of responsibility exist. If the question gives you a professional providing advice that is reasonably relied upon, that is your Hedley Byrne signal.
For psychiatric injury, distinguish primary victims (in the zone of physical danger, recoverable if physical injury was foreseeable) from secondary victims. Secondary victims must satisfy the strict Alcock control mechanisms: a close tie of love and affection, proximity in time and space to the event or its immediate aftermath, and perception through their own unaided senses. Miss any of these and the claim fails. Learn the Alcock criteria as a list — questions here are almost always decided by one missing element.
Turning Knowledge into SQE1 Marks
Knowing the law is only half the job. SQE1 is a single-best-answer test, so your task is to apply the framework quickly and eliminate the near-misses. A few habits pay off:
- Read the final line of the question first. It tells you whether you are being asked about duty, breach, causation, defences or quantum — and you can then read the facts with a purpose.
- Watch the calibration words. "Most likely", "best advice" and "strongest argument" mean two options may be technically correct; you want the one that fits the facts most precisely.
- Practise until the checklist is automatic. Under a five-hour-plus paper, you will not have time to reconstruct the law from scratch on every question.
Negligence rewards the disciplined candidate. Because it recurs so often across FLK1, the time you invest in a clean, repeatable method here pays dividends far beyond a single question.
If you want that method drilled with feedback, the CELE SQE (celebar.com) courses cover all 13 FLK subjects, with our SQE1 Short-term Course at £1,750, the Mid-term at £2,750 and the Long-term at £3,720; a single-FLK option is half those prices, and there is £150 off within three months of your exam. Our SQE1 Question Bank is £575 per month if you simply want more negligence practice under timed conditions. Reach us on WeChat SQE100 or at [email protected] — no pressure, just ask what you need.