Duty

Negligence requires you to establish four legal elements:

Duty of care – The defendant owes a duty of care to an injury victim. Although the specifics of the duty of care vary from situation to situation, it requires a party to act reasonably under the circumstances to avoid injuring others.

Breach of duty – You must show that the defendant breached a duty of care they owed you. This means they did not meet the standard of care required in your case.

Causation – The element of causation requires proof that a party’s breach of their duty of care directly caused your injuries. This means that you wouldn’t have been injured if they hadn’t breached their duty.

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Damages – For the element of damages, you must prove financial, emotional, or personal losses you have suffered due to your injuries. You can do this by providing bills, invoices, receipts, pay stubs, or expert testimony.

Traffic laws require drivers to operate their vehicles in a specific manner. Professional rules regulate how healthcare providers must deliver treatment. Case law developed over the decades can establish rules for a person’s duty of care, such as a property owner’s duty to protect visitors from hazardous conditions on their premises.

The duty of care can also arise from basic, common-sense rules about how a person should act. As a result, courts instruct juries in many personal injury lawsuits to use their experience and common sense to determine how a reasonable, prudent person would have acted in the same circumstances.

Negligence Per Se

The standard of care also requires people to follow the law. A person who causes injuries while violating the law may bear liability due to being negligent per se. A negligence per se claim argues that a party committed negligence simply by breaking the law. For example, a driver who gets into a car accident while driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs may be liable under a negligence per se claim by violating DUI laws.

What Is a Standard of Care?

In a personal injury negligence claim, the standard of care refers to the actions a person should take to avoid injuring others. The specifics of the standard of care will depend on the circumstances of the case and the relationship between the at-fault party and the victim.

What Is Duty of Care in a Negligence Case?

The duty of care refers to the legal responsibility that people owe to others to avoid causing physical, financial, or legal harm. The specific acts that a person must take to avoid harming others may depend on statutory laws or professional regulations.

Ordinary Negligence

In most personal injury claims, the standard of care will involve ordinary negligence. The standard of care for ordinary negligence typically refers to the degree of care used by reasonable people under similar circumstances. In ordinary negligence, the standard of care asks how other reasonable people would act in identical circumstances.

Professional Negligence

Other types of personal injury claims can involve different standards of care. For example, a medical malpractice claim involves professional negligence. The standard of care in a case involving professional negligence refers to the actions or decisions that other professionals of similar training and experience would make in identical circumstances.

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Examples of breaches of duty in common types of personal injury claims include:

• Drivers violating traffic laws, such as by speeding, running red lights or stop signs, or failing to yield the right of way
• A store owner or manager not cleaning up a spill or putting up a wet floor sign.
• A dog owner not maintaining their pet’s enclosure, allowing the dog to escape and eventually attack someone in public.
• A doctor failing to diagnose a patient.

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