Negligence Question

Victoria's biggest ever class action involves 10,000 people affected by the
giant Kilmore East blaze on Black Saturday in February 2009. Relatives of
the 119 people killed in the fire, the hundreds of people who were injured
or who lost their homes and property have taken part in the case against
power distributor SP Ausnet.

The trial came about after Victoria's Bushfires Royal Commission found the
Kilmore East blaze that started on 7 February, 2009, was caused by an
ageing SP Ausnet power line. This is not a finding on duty of care, just
causation.

But SP Ausnet has submitted the finding was wrong, and the Commission
hearing was too brief to consider adequate scientific analysis. In a closing
submission to the trial of more than 1000 pages, SP Ausnet argued it did
not owe a duty of care to the class action members because the outcome
of the fire was not "reasonably foreseeable".

My Hyde QC, lawyer for the victims, argued that if a $10 plastic
"dampener" had been installed on the power line, the Kilmore East
bushfire would have been prevented. "In light winds a line will vibrate up to
200 times per second and that puts enormous strain on the conductor,
particularly at the very end points where it becomes stiff and joins onto the
conductor," he said. "We say that their standards from 1992 provided that
they should have had a $10 plastic dampener on this line... as a result you
wouldn't have had this line come down on Black Saturday and cause such
devastation."

Your task: provide advice on whether you believe that the defendant
is liable in negligence. Use both the common law and, where
relevant, the Wrongs Act. You may assume that Mr Hyde is correct
about the plastic dampener. Since the fires SP Ausnet has installed
the $10 plastic dampener on this line and all other lines.

Brief Issues: Here is another negligence question involving physical/property

damage Please discuss the it raises:
1. duty of care - the D v S reasonable forseeability/proximity test (and
perhaps it might be considered 'unusual' so as to give rise to a look at 'salient
features'...)
2. also discuss breach (look at relevant Wyong/s48(2) factors - as well as s49
(b) and (c) (doing stuff (eg putting on the $10 dampener) after the event does
not amount to an admission that you should have done it earlier))