Duty of care does not encompass unforeseeable events

In a recent case involving child abuse, the facts of which were particularly harrowing, it was alleged that staff at the defendant hospital had been in breach of their duty of care to a baby when they had failed to recommend an urgent head scan after a normal abdominal scan had led to their ruling out pyloric stenosis. The judge reminded counsel that the duty of care in negligence does not extend to events that are not reasonably foreseeable.