Today I would like to talk to you about snow blindness in
cats. This is a serious issue that needs
to be dealt with the utmost care and sincerity.
No, I’m just kidding with you. Today, we are going to run though the
elements of negligence for tort liability.
Negligence is defined as a failure to exercise reasonable care to avoid
injury or damage to another person or property.
Reasonable care is typically determined by the reasonable man standard,
which is to say, an average person in a community who has average skills and
who is in a similar circumstance. We
aren’t talking about Jesus and we aren’t talking about Jim Jones. Typically a jury would determine what a
reasonable man would do.
Negligence
is a standard that has to be reached for a party to be liable for several
different types of torts and we won’t discuss that here. However, there are several elements of negligence
that I want to discuss. Elements are the
questions that the jury should be asking themselves to determine if the person
acted reasonably.
11.)
Duty – Whether the defendant owe the plaintiff a
duty to not act unreasonably.
a.
This duty can arise by statute, but more
commonly are raised by common law decisions.
22.)
Breach – Whether or not the defendant breached
that duty by acting unreasonably.
a.
Meaning, would a reasonable person act this way
considering:
i. Foreseeable
risk of injury
ii. The
extent of risk posed by the content
iii. Likelihood
of a risk actually causing the harm
iv. Alternatives
to the conduct causing the harm
v. Cost
benefit analysis of acts – is it economically feasible to act in a safer
manner.
33.)
Cause – there are two types of cause:
a.
Direct cause – cause in fact
b.
Proximate cause – if it makes legal sense to
hold defendant liable
i. This
is probable best done by example:
1.
If you throw away a glass bottle full of grease
and a dog comes and takes that bottle away.
Subsequently a tornado picks up that glass bottle and throws it into
someone’s house. Here there is not
proximate cause for you putting the bottle in the trash. The proximate cause was an act of God.
44.)
Damage – plaintiff was actually damaged by the
defendant’s breach of duty
A plaintiff has to prove that the
defendant has to prove that the defendant had a duty to not actually
unreasonably. They did act unreasonably either directly or proximately, and
this breach caused the plaintiff damage.
If one of these elements is missing there should be no liability for
negligence.
These are the basic elements of
negligence I hope you learned something useful, until next time.
Justin Steele
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