Negligence思维导图

这是一篇关于Negligence的思维导图，这部分内容对于很多人来说都是拦路虎，这个由我亲自制作的思维导图希望会对你的学习有所帮助！喜欢的话请给我点个赞吧！

Negligence

• What is negligence?
  • Someone who commits a careless act that creats harm to another person is negligent.
  • Over the past several years, negligence has become the most common area of tort law.
  • Negligence has 3 key characteristics:
    • The action in NOT intentional.
    • The action is also NOT planned.
    • Some type of injury is created.
• A negligence case
  • To establish a prima facie case for negligence, the following elements must be proved
  • A Duty of Due Care
    • Due care: It refers to the effort made by an ordinary, prudent and reasonable party to avoid harm to another, taking the circumstances into account.
    • In a negligence lawsuit, the plaintiff must demonstraye the defendant owed him or her a duty of care — a specific legal obligation not to harm others or their property.
    • Applying the Reasonable Person Standard
      • Dedendant's conduct is measured against the reasonable, ordinary, prudent person.
      • The term "reasonably prudent person" refers to a legal standard that represents how the average person would reponsibly act in a certain situation.
      • Minors: under 18 years old
      • Elderly: who are negligent will not be shielded from liability for their acts by claiming that they "aren't as sharp as they used to be."
      • Drunkenness, Blackouts, Seizures, and Sudden Mental Illness.
  • Breach of the Duty
    • The failure to act with the level of care that a reasonable person, which is someone of ordinary prudence, would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances.
  • Causation
    • The causation elements has 2 parts.
      • Actual cause: "cause in fact" or "but-for cause"
        • A cause or factor without which the event could not have occured.
        • The but-for test is often used to determine actual causation.
        • The but-for test is applied by considering only the negligent aspect of the defendant's conduct.
        • The test simply asks, "but for the existence of A, would B have occured?" If the answer is no, then factor A is an actual cause of resuit B.
        • Proving But-for Cause: The Slip and Fall Case
          • It can be a challenge in fairly ordinary fact situation.
          • In order for you to claim premises liability against a property owner after you have fallen, you muast prove that the owner must have caused or known about a dangerous situation that let you to fall.
      • "Proximate cause": direct cause or legal cause
        • The causal connection between the negligence conduct of the defendant and the plaintiff's injury was close enough that the defendant should be held liable.
        • Jury Instruction: Direct cause
          • It is the direct cause which products the accident and resulting injury, and without which the injury would not have occured.
        • Jury Instruction: Foreseeability of Injury
          • The defendant be able to foresee that the injury would be the result of the negligence.
        • The two dominant approaches used in proximate causev analysis:
          • direct cause
          • foreseeability
        • "Intervening cause" and "Superseding cause"
          • The defendant's negligent conduct may not immediately cause the plaintiff any harm at all.
          • Instead, the negligence creates a dangerous situation or, more broadly, places the plaintiff in a position of vulnerability.
          • Some other actor or force then comes into play to trigger the potential danger created hy the defendant and to thereby cause injury to the plaintiff.
          • This other actor or force is the intervening cause.
          • The difficulty is to decide whether or not this intervening force is so extraordinary or so independent of the original negligent conduct that the defendant should be excused from liability.
          • If the intervening cause is deemed to be so significant that it excuses the defendant , it is referred to as a "superseding cause."
  • Damages
    • The plaintiff must prove that actual injury resulted from the defendant's conduct.
    • Nominal damages are not awarded for negligent conduct that dose not cause injury.
• Proof of Negligence
  • Violation of statutes:
    • Negligence per se; Legal negligence
    • If a defendant's actions violated a statute, then the court will consider the actions to be negligent without asking whether or not a reasonable person wuold have done the same thing. In these cases, the judge or jury will ask only whether the statute was violated and, if so, what damages resulted.
  • Res Ipsa Loquitur
    • The thing speaks for itself.
    • The elements of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur include:
      • The harm wuold not ordinarilt have occurred without someone's negligence.
      • The instrumentality of the harm was under the exclusive control of the defendant at the time of the likely negligent act.
      • The plaintiff did not contribute to the harm by his own negligence.