Control, vulnerability and reliance are not all-or-nothing necessary elements for establishing a duty of care; they are salient features of varying degree to be weighed in an overall assessment. For duty of care purposes, the relevant inquiry regarding reliance is what the defendant would reasonably foresee about the plaintiff's reliance, not whether the plaintiff actually relied. A consent authority's statutory obligation to consider flooding risk and drainage does not, without more, give rise to a duty of care to a subsequent purchaser in respect of pure economic loss from water table issues, particularly where the developer and its engineers were aware of the risk.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 16 later cases that cite this judgment.