Duty

Duty is a question of law for the judge, so MBE stems often turn on whether any duty existed at all — the classic tell is a defendant who failed to act (nonfeasance). The default rule is no duty to rescue or aid a stranger; the answer flips only if a recognized special relationship, the defendant’s own negligent or even innocent creation of the peril, or a voluntarily undertaken rescue (which must then be performed non-negligently) supplies one. Watch for the rescue doctrine (“danger invites rescue”) treating injured rescuers as foreseeable plaintiffs — and, conversely, for the firefighter’s rule, which in most jurisdictions bars public-safety officers from suing for the very risk they were hired to confront.

Do not conflate duty’s foreseeability-of-the-plaintiff inquiry (Palsgraf) with proximate cause’s foreseeability-of-the-harm inquiry — they sound identical but test different elements, and a tempting wrong answer rephrases one as the other. Likewise, duty asks whether a standard applies; breach asks whether the defendant fell below it. Memory hook: duty is the “whether,” breach is the “how badly.”