The term “negligence” often gets misused by the public. What non-attorneys consider to be a malleable description of a person’s actions, attorneys and others with a legal education know relates to a very specific idea in tort law. The definition of negligence is the failure to use reasonable care.[1] The law of California declares that “everyone is responsible . . . for an injury occasioned to another by his want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his property or person . . . .”[2] Basically this means that people are generally liable when they negligently injure others. In order to prove negligence, one must be able to satisfy each of four elements. The four elements of negligence are: Duty, Breach of Duty, Causation, Damages.
DUTY
The first step in proving someone acted negligently is demonstrating that a duty was owed. A duty of care is defined as “a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others”.[3] This reasonable person standard is objective. Thanks in part to the level of training they receive, some professionals such as doctors are held to the higher standard of a reasonably prudent professional in that practice. Children are also held to a special standard of care. A majority of jurisdictions require children to conduct themselves like a “reasonable for a child of similar age, experience, and intelligence under like circumstances”.[4]
BREACH OF DUTY
The second element of negligence is breach of duty. The test has both a subjective element and an objective element. A defendant breaches his duty of care when he exposes another to a known risk. This is the subjective element. On the other hand, a defendant who fails to realize an obvious risk of loss to another has also breached that duty. This is the objective element. To put it more simply, “a person who engages in activities that pose an unreasonable risk toward others and their property that actually results in harm, breaches their duty of reasonable care”.[5]
CAUSATION
For a successful negligence claim, two kinds of causation that must be proven: factual causation and legal causation.
Factual causation is the easier of the two to prove. The test for factual causation is “whether the injury would have occurred but for, or without, the accused party’s breach of the duty owed to the injured party”.[6] Factual causation is also found to exist in situations where the defendant may not have caused the harm, but merely increased the risk of the harm.
Legal causation must also be proven for a successful negligence claim, and is much harder to prove than its factual counterpart. The legal causation requirement helps prevent defendants from being exposed to, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, “liability in an indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class.”[7] The main tenet of legal causation is foreseeability. If the harm caused was not foreseeable at the time it occurred, how could the defendant have been expected to avoid it? They can’t, making legal causation an important but difficult element of negligence to prove.
DAMAGES
The damages awarded in successful negligence cases are compensatory in nature, meaning they attempt to redress the claimant’s losses. The amount of damages awarded is meant to make the plaintiff “whole,” which is the legal term for putting a person in the position he was before the negligent act occurred.[8] Contrary to most claimants’ wishes, damages are not meant to pay for a new house or car, or enable the plaintiff to retire at an early age. They are awarded so that the plaintiff can keep up with their mortgage or lease, pay medical bills, and return to work with some money in their pockets.
There are three types of compensatory damages: Special, General, and Punitive. In a personal injury case such as an auto accident, the most common special damages are lost wages, medical bills, and damage to your car. The award is the provable dollar amount lost as a direct result of the negligent act. General damages, on the other hand, are less concrete. This is where the ever popular pain and suffering damages can be found. Although pain and suffering amounts may seem arbitrary, they are intended to compensate the plaintiff for the inconvenience and stress of his ordeal.
Punitive damages are different from special and general damages in that they are meant to punish a defendant for his intentional, reckless or malicious wrongful behavior.[9] Punitive damages are not available in a negligence case. For example, a driver who negligently runs a red light will not have to pay punitive damages. His actions, although illegal, were not intentional, reckless or malicious. However, if the driver was drunk at the time or intentionally ran the light, punitive damages can be awarded to punish the driver’s reckless or intentional behavior.
[1] http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/n010.htm
[2] Cal.Civ.Code Sec. 1714(a).
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care
[4] http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/outlines/html/torts/torts03.htm
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence
[7] http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/13029
[8] http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Negligence
[9] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/punitive+damages
