Negligence

Negligence is a tort that that plainly results from the failure of an individual to take sufficient care to fulfill a duty owed. In Latin, negligence means to neglect and in tort law this means to fail to exercise care that a prudent person would exercise in similar circumstances. This kind of tort is unintentional and typically occurs when a person does not provide for the proper care of another individual. In a nutshell, this is negligence. A simple example of negligence is a person running a red light and proceeding to crash into another person’s car.

Brief Historical Background

While tort law has existed for decades and decades, the tort of negligence is much more recent. In fact, prior to 1932, there was no tort of negligence. Negligence as a tort began developing from different actions, including duty of care, third party liability and so on. There is a trail of cases that all led to the tort of negligence  that exists today. The first time that duty of care extending to third parties were discussed was in the case of Landridge versus Levy. While the court refused to set the precedent to impose duty of care to third parties in this case, there were some damages awarded. As the debate continued throughout out the years, the decisions of more and more cases brought us to current negligence tort law as found in Donoghue versus Stevenson. This case really opened up the tort of negligence as it is in modern day.

Precedent Setting Cases

While there are many precedent setting cases that led to negligence becoming a tort, there are a few more recent landmark cases. In Kelly versus Gwinnell from 1984, there was a host of a party who served a guest (who was an adult) alcohol even though the guest was intoxicated.

Furthermore, the guest proceeded to operate a motor vehicle and get into an accident. A third party was injured in the accident. It was found that the host of the party was held liable for the injuries of the third party.

In an even more recent case, Van Horn versus Watson et al in 2008 in California, the California Supreme Court made a ruling that the “Good Samaritan” statute only applies to the emergency medical care of a person. The statute does not protect individuals against lawsuits on claims of negligence while transporting and rescuing accident victims. If a person decides to come to the non-medical aid of another person, then she or he must employ the duty to exercise due care. Of course, a person does not have the duty to come to the aid of another person but should he or she, that person must exercise due care.

Defenses

In order to be successful when defending a negligence suit, one must try to negate one of the elements in the plaintiff’s cause of action. One must introduce evidence that she or he: exercised reasonable care, does not owe a duty to the other person, or in fact, did not cause the damages sustained by the plaintiff and so on. By negating one of these elements, it is possible to defend a negligence tort.

There are also a few doctrines that a defendant may rely on. These doctrines may limit or even eliminate liability when based on alleged negligence. There are different doctrines however some of the most common doctrines include comparative fault, assumption of risk and contributory negligence.