What is the test used to determine whether a defendant owed a duty of due care to a plaintiff?

In determining whether the defendant owed a duty of due care to the plaintiff in a given case, the courts have applied the balancing test derived [16 Cal.App.4th 1839] from Rowland v. Christian, supra, 69 Cal.2d at page 113, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561: "... [T]he major [considerations] are the foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty the plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct, the policy of preventing future harm, the extent of the burden to the defendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise

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A. Foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff.

In deciding the question of foreseeability in the context of legal duty, "a court's task--in determining 'duty'--is not to decide whether a particular plaintiff's injury was reasonably foreseeable in light of a particular defendant's conduct, but rather to evaluate more generally whether the category of negligent conduct at issue is sufficiently likely to result in the kind of harm experienced that liability may appropriately be imposed on the negligent party." (Ballard v. Uribe (1986) 41 Cal.3d 564, 573, fn. 6, 224 Cal.Rptr. 664, 715 P.2d 624.)