What Is Negligence?
- Written By: G. Wiesen
- Edited By: Heather Bailey
- Last Modified Date: 31 March 2013
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Copyright Protected:
2003-2013 Conjecture Corporation
Negligence, in a legal sense, is typically considered to be a failure to act in accordance with, or an action that is in opposition to, what a reasonable person would do. This hypothetical “reasonable person” is the basis for most claims of negligent behavior, and is typically the scale against which other people’s actions are considered. The five basic concepts behind establishing negligence in a court case are a duty of care, a breach of that duty, actual or legal cause, establishment of proximate cause, and harm resulting in damages.
The simplest understanding of negligence comes in understanding that it is basically the result of a person not behaving in a way that a reasonable person should. This is not always the same as inattention since someone can be quite attentive but still behave negligently. The five common elements of negligence are used to establish how a reasonable person should behave in a given situation, and then determine if that behavior was not followed by someone accused of being negligent.
Establishing duty of care regards determining the responsibilities of a reasonable person in a situation or role. It comes down to understanding the duty of a police officer on patrol, a factory working assembling a car, an engineer designing a building, and a barista serving hot coffee to customers. A breach of that duty is the establishment of negligent behavior by a person as he or she does not act in accordance with the duties of a reasonable person in that position. This can be both acting inappropriately and failing to act appropriately.
The actual or legal cause of a situation is involved with determining if something really caused something else. Someone can claim that an accident caused the person harm, but he or she must be able to prove actual causation to establish negligence. Proximate cause deals with how reasonable it is to predict that the causal events could occur. This deals with the theoretical distance between causes and events.
For example, a barista not properly affixing a lid onto a cup of hot coffee could reasonably be seen as the actual cause for that coffee burning a customer. The company that owned the coffee stand could also be considered reasonably responsible if it failed to train the employee in how to properly place lids on cups. On the other hand, the person who picked the beans used to make the coffee that burned the customer would not be considered to be a reasonable proximate cause of the negligence.
Finally, a person seeking redress for negligence must prove that harm did occur in order to seek damages for that harm. Someone burned by coffee must be able to show pictures of the burn and hospital or doctors bills treating the injury. All of this is used to establish how a reasonable person should have behaved and to judge whether that course of action was followed, and ultimately understand the consequences of such behavior.
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anon327748
Post 6 |
My daughter, age 11, was boarding a train. The previous train was late and this specific one was overcrowded. She was pushed from the back side of the carriage to the front as people got of. The doors of the train was kept open by men hanging out. She was pushed and fell out and rolled along the railway line. She was severely hurt, bruised and in pain. She stayed in hospital for 11 days. She still has a foot fracture that needs a third operation. She also needs to see the psychologist, Physio and neurologist. Now I need to know how can I go about suing Metrorail please. |
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comfyshoes
Post 4 |
SurfNturf-I just want to say that medical negligence awards by the jury are in the form of compensatory damages and punitive damages.
Compensatory damages are a judgment of monetary relief for current medical bills and future health care needs as a result of the medical condition.
Punitive damages are additional damages that a patient seeks to further punish the doctor. These claims can result in multimillion dollar awards which is why doctors really seek the best negligence attorney possible. |
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surfNturf
Post 3 |
Sneakers41-It is just awful when I hear stories like that.
I wanted to say that sometimes medical negligence also results in injuries to the patient. Medical negligence results when a doctor did not take reasonable care of the patient as a result the patient was injured.
For example, if a doctor prescribes medication that results in adverse reactions to the patient and the doctor did not investigate other medical conditions that the patient suffers from would probably need to see a medical negligence lawyer.
When prescribing medication a doctor needs to study the patient’s medical history as well as possible risk factors that might result in adverse effects.
For example, if a woman is a smoker and over the age of 35, and the doctor prescribes birth control pills with progesterone, then the doctor would be found medically negligent if the patient then develops a blood clot.
These are two well known risk factors that contribute to the condition and any doctor should know that. That is what is considered reasonable care.
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sneakers41
Post 2 |
Moldova- You hear about cases like that all the time. People try to sue for things that are actually their fault.
I think that product liability negligence cases are quite different. In negligence lawsuits involving product liability negligence claims usually the manufacturer of the product is to blame for the injuries that were sustained.
For example, there was a crib manufacturer that was sued because a child's head got caught between the bars and suffocated. There are safety regulations regarding the spacing in cribs so the manufacturer settled these negligence claims and recalled the cribs.
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Moldova
Post 1 |
Negligence claims are brought about as a result of another person's actions that caused the injury .
In negligence law, contributory negligence involves in action in which a person is partly responsible for their own injuries.
For example, if a person were intoxicated while operating heavy machinery at work and happen to get injured, the injuries would be categorized as contributory negligence.
This means that the person was injured acted recklessly which caused the injury. These negligence damages tend to be smaller because juries realize that the person was injured as a result of their own actions not the actions of someone else.
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