Tort Law: Negligence

The following five distinct elements are essential to a negligence claim under tort law:

1. Duty -the plaintiff has to show that the defendant had an obligation to due something for or to the plaintiff, or not to do something for or to the plaintiff
2. Breach of Duty – the defendant failed to meet the standard of care for a given duty, violating the duty
3. Cause in Fact – the plaintiff has to show that the injury he suffered was sufficiently connected to the defendants breach of duty.
4. Proximate Cause – different from cause in fact, although together they make causation for purposes of negligence. Courts will frequently interchange cause in fact with proximate cause.  To establish proximate cause, the plaintiff has to show that the causal relationship between the defendants conduct and the plaintiffs injury was not too attenuated, remote, or freakish to justify imposing responsibility on the defendant. Public policy alone will not relieve the defendant of liability. For example, just because a drug is FDA approved, will not exempt pharmaceutical companies from law suits.
5. Damages – the plaintiff has to have suffered a cognizable injury that can be measured by the court. Actual damages can be physical, emotional, or merely economic.

Feel free to click on the above links for further explanation of the topics. This page is to give you a broad overview of the essential elements of negligence claim.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Law School, Torts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.