How Negligence is Established

Negligence cases depend on one person being found negligent in dealing with the other.  While the things that establish negligence might seem obvious at a glance, what establishes negligence in regards to liability in the case can be quite different. And without negligence being proven in a lawsuit, there really is no case and damages won’t be awarded.

Breach of Duty and Negligence

When you owe a duty to someone, it means that you are expected to exercise reasonable care when around that person.  If someone is standing behind you, you owe a duty to them to not put them in harm’s way, for instance.  So if you know someone is there and you swing your arm and hit, that’s a breach of duty, and that makes you negligent. 
If someone walked up behind you and you did not know they were there, when you hit them it wasn’t technically breach of duty, because you can’t owe duty to someone you do not know is there. Another example would be that if you know someone is allergic to peanuts and you’ve made a dessert with peanuts in it, you owe them a duty to not put them in danger with the peanuts.  If you did, it would be negligence. If you don’t know the person’s allergy, however, and you give them a piece, you’re not negligent because you owed them no duty.

Causes

Now it’s important to establish that the injury was caused by the breach of duty.  If the person standing behind you would not have been injured if you hadn’t committed breach of duty and swung your arm, then cause in fact has been established.

Proximate cause is an extended type of cause for things that the plaintiff suffers as a direct result of the defendant’s negligence. It relates to the extent of responsibility placed on a defendant for damages.  If you know someone is behind you and you swing your arm and hit them, you’ve committed breach of duty and are negligent.  If the man behind you is wearing glasses and you break them, and then a week later when he is on his way to the optometrist to get new glasses he is injured in a car accident, you wouldn’t be considered liable for those damages even though the man wouldn’t have been going to the optometrist had he not been injured by you.

Because it’s unlikely you could have foreseen how your negligence could have indirectly caused more harm by the person getting into an accident to get the glasses fixed that you broke, then it’s not considered proximate cause and damages wouldn’t be awarded for it.

How Damages are Awarded

Negligence isn’t the deciding factor in these cases.  A person can be so negligent that anyone could recognize it, but unless that negligence causes harm, no lawsuit can be brought against him.  You must be able to prove that harm and injury resulted from the negligence, or damage to property, or both.

Contact an Attorney in your local area today!