Blackfield College is an independent secondary school located in Sydney, New South Wales. On 20 September 2020, Mahmood, the deputy Head of School, asks Frank, a new teacher, if he can take classes and attend ground duty at recess to replace an absent teacher. Mahmood states that all the College's regulations for discipline, class management and child supervision are located on the 'Staff Duties Tab' of the College 'Learning and Management System'. On his arrival at work, he gives him a staff login and password to access the system and says that he 'can scan these during his period 1 class'. Mahmood says: "You are an experienced teacher; you'll know what to do".

Frank attends morning classes, but due to having to attend to some student misbehaviour in class, has no time to inspect the school's regulations, including ground supervision. Frank attends ground duty on time. He notices a student, Bridget, 12 years old, with two other students all of whom have tied their left shoe laces to their right shoe laces and racing each other. Frank instructs Bridget and her two friends to untie their laces or they may fall.

Frank is distracted by a separate group of students running in a concreted area in a dangerous way and goes to speak to them. Unattended, Bridget and the two students continue their race with shoelaces tied together. Bridget trips, and falls headfirst through a plate glass window of the school library. Because the window is old, it is not safety glass and it shatters, sending shards of glass flying. A shard of glass flies into the right eyeball of Bridget. Bridget experiences severe pain. Blood flows from the wound.

Bjork Helper, a visiting parent, sees the incident and the injury. She hurriedly tells a nearby student to bring a first aid kit. The student brings a first aid kit kept in the library entrance. Bjork opens the kit, and quickly extracts a visible piece of glass from the eye using tweezers. Bjork then wraps the eye with a bandage and Bridget is taken to East West hospital.

In accident and emergency, Dr Quack, the registrar on duty attends Bridget. He has never dealt with an eye injury before. A more experienced doctor, Dr Binsued, tells Dr Quack not to touch the eye but to seek a consultation with an ophthalmic surgeon. Dr Quack considers he knows what should be done and sedates Bridget and pokes around in the eye with tweezers, removing another shard of glass. This aggravates the bleeding and so Dr Quack then refers Bridget to Dr See, ophthalmic surgeon. Dr See reviews Bridget and advises that the removal of the glass by either Bjork or Dr Quack has caused permanent damage to the eye. Bridget has a 40% permanent loss of vision in the right eye.

Bridget is an academically gifted student who has a particular interest in mathematics and aspires to be a mechanical engineer. Before the accident, she had no underlying medical problem with her sight. Advise Bridget's parents on potential tortious causes of action, defences and identify the heads of damage Bridget may be entitled to.