Negligence: A Crucial Legal Concept that You Should Understand

You might know the term negligence. You can hear it in several different places. However, if you use it in a courtroom setting, it means something very specific.

You should know what negligence means in court if you’re bringing a personal injury lawsuit against another person or entity. Personal injury law often gets into the negligence concept when you’re suing a person or company.

We’ll discuss negligence in detail right now. We’ll cover what it means and the four elements of negligence as well.

What is Negligence?

Negligence means that a person or entity either did or didn’t do something. They had a reasonable expectation to act in a certain way, and they did not do that.

You can say that a person or entity acted negligently if they broke a law. You might also say they acted negligently if they didn’t necessarily break any laws, but they still conducted themselves in a way other than society or some officious or governing body believed they should act.

If someone acts negligently, they might break laws, and if they do, they may face some criminal charges. However, if you’re suing them, that’s not a criminal matter. It’s a civil one. If the police and the court system deem it appropriate, they will charge them criminally as well.

Now, let’s run down the four elements that go into negligence. You must prove all four took place to collect some money in a civil trial.

Duty

You must first prove that duty exists. Duty, in this case, means that society or some other officious entity dictates that a person or business should act a certain way toward you. Law might dictate that duty, but custom may as well.

For instance, duty often comes into play with personal injury cases where a doctor or hospital treats you. If the doctor treats you, then they certainly have a duty. They take an oath to first do no harm, and the medical profession dictates that they act a particular way. If they treat you, they owe you a duty, and they must follow what their profession states they should do.

Duty might also involve someone who owns a vicious dog. If they know their dog should not run loose around the neighborhood, but they don’t restrain it, they violated that duty.

You can probably easily think of other situations where an individual or company owes you a duty.

Breach of Duty

Next, you must establish that the person or entity you’re suing breached their duty. They likely did so by violating either a law or custom.

A doctor who does not treat you well violated a duty of care they had toward you. That means they committed medical malpractice. Maybe they gave you the wrong medication, or they operated on you when they didn’t have to.

The person with the vicious dog that didn’t chain it up in the yard violated a duty as well. They knew they should restrain the animal, but they didn’t do it.

If you fall in a store, and a store employee just mopped there, they should have put up a sign. They violated their duty if they didn’t do that.

You can probably think of many other examples as well.

Causation

Causation comes next. Let’s say that you’ve proven there’s a duty and that this person or entity violated that duty. You must next establish that the other person or entity’s actions or inactions caused your injury.

If you fall in a store, you can easily say you fell because an employee mopped and then didn’t put up a sign. Since they didn’t put up that sign, you didn’t know about the wet floor. In that case, an inaction caused your injury, and a jury will likely see it that way as well.

If a loose dog bites you, the dog’s owner didn’t tie it up, so there’s clear causation there as well. If they had just restrained the dog, you would not have this painful bite.

The doctor who operated when they shouldn’t or gave you the wrong pills acted inappropriately, and clearly, they caused your pain, stress, or discomfort. In these cases, you can see obvious causation.

Damages

Finally, you must prove that damages occurred. That’s usually easy enough. In the dog bite case, you can show the jury the dog bite. If it healed, you can show pictures or your medical bills.

In the case where the doctor harmed you, you can describe what happened. You can mention the emotional distress that you felt when you realized the doctor operated needlessly. You can mention how you got sick after you took the wrong medication.

If you slipped and fell in an establishment, you can show that you’re now on crutches and recovering. You might show the medical bills you paid as well.

Damages can include physical injuries you sustained through the person or entity’s action or inaction. They might also include financial damages that you sustained.

If you couldn’t work for several weeks or months and lost wages after the incident, you can sue and get those wages back. You might also get damages from physical therapy for which you paid. You may get damages from less tangible suffering, like your fragile emotional state, if the incident traumatized you.

To collect money from the defendant, you must prove all four negligence elements. You can do so on your own, but usually, you’ll hire a lawyer who can do it for you.

They will help with your courtroom battle. They have probably gone through this several times before, so they know all the legal maneuvers that can help you.

You need an experienced lawyer for these cases. You don’t want someone who just passed the bar. The right attorney has done many personal injury cases in the past.

Ideally, you can get a settlement offer. If you can’t, you must go through the trial and get a jury’s verdict.