Essays --

some lawsuits to go forward against the government is limited for policy reasons. This is because these suits may hold the government responsible for too many misfortunes, or prevent the government of agency from engaging in certain duties without the threat of exorbitant financial responsibility. The second prong of the Anns test thus prevents the government from becoming an insurer of all potential harm which the government is found to have a proximate relationship to. The test set forth in Anns is important to understand when discussing Cooper v. Hobart, which was adopted as the test for the duty of care for the government and its agencies after Kamloops v. Nielson. This is because Cooper v. Hobart is the case which is said to have redefined Anns into the current standard, the Cooper-Anns test. Facts of Cooper v. Hobart Cooper v. Hobart is a case involving the Registrar of Mortgage Brokers, a statutory regulator of mortgage licenses. In the case, Eron Mortgage Corporation was a mortgage broker as defined by the Mortgage Broker’s Act. â€Å"Eron acted as a mortgage broker for large syndicated loans. It arranged for numerous lenders (or investors) to pool their funds for the purpose of making a single loan to a borrower, which was typically a developer of commercial real estate. The syndicated loans were made in the name of Eron or one of its related companies, which held the security in a trust for the investors. Cooper, an investor, had advanced money to Eron. Hobart, in his official capacity as Mortgage Broker Registrar, suspended Eron’s mortgage broker’s license in October of 1997 because Eron was allegedly using the funds of their investors for unauthorized purposes. Shortly after the suspension of its license, Eron we... ...tending the current duty of care to a new duty of care, there were policy reason to find that there was not a proximate enough relationship between Cooper and the Registrar to establish a duty of care. The Registrar’s duties under the statute did not give rise to a duty of care to the plaintiff. However, as the new Cooper-Anns test includes the considerations of policy at both stages of the analysis, one can assume that if policy reasons are in favor of recognizing a new duty of care, the court will, in fact, recognize it. There is a question of whether the court should have recognized a new duty of care in Cooper v. Hobart. In the Hobart case, the statute did not establish a duty of care to the plaintiffs/investors. Furthermore, the Registrar owes a duty to act in the interest of the public at large which may at time have competing interests with investors.