There are three elements that must be present for an act or omission to be negligent; (1) The defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff; (2) The defendant breached the duty of care by an act or omission; (3) The plaintiff must suffer harm as a result - whether physical, emotional, or financial. The court could decide that Freddy (the plaintiff) owed a duty of care on the part of Elvis (the defendant) if it finds that what happened to Freddy was within the realm of reasonable foreseeability - any harm that could be caused to a "near " from Elvis' actions that he could reasonably have expected to happen. The "neighbor principle" was established in Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932). Donoghue bought ginger beer from a friend of hers at an ice cream shop. He discovered a partially decomposed snail inside the opaque bottle. She claimed to suffer from gastroenteritis and consequently nervous shock and sued the manufacturer. She couldn't sue for breach of contract (the contract stipulated that the manufacturer would provide the consumer with products that wouldn't harm her) because her friend bought it for her, so she sued for negligence. Lord Atkinson, who was the trial judge, said the case rested on the question: do manufacturers owe a duty of care to the consumer, as well as the buyer (the lounge). Is the plaintiff the defendant's "neighbor" to whom the plaintiff owes a duty of care? Lord Atkinson said that a neighbor is anyone you can influence closely and directly by your actions. Then it was established that the producer owed a duty of care to Ms Donoghue, as it was incumbent on them…half of paper…they wanted to fire an employee but didn't have a good reason, so they might stage an "accident ” that indicated the employee's negligence, giving him an excuse to fire him and avoid an unfair dismissal action. The action would obviously be dismissed once the offending employee was removed. Second, although the employee is supposedly an extension of the employer, can the employer really be held responsible for the actions of another person with free will? What if the employee started out well in his duties, but quickly became negligent in performing his job and then made a mistake? Sure, they should have been better monitored, but if the transformation was rapid (perhaps due to a death in the employee's family), then there really wasn't much the employer could have done to ensure this didn't happen..