Sometimes accidents just happen - car crashes, slips and falls, bad outcomes from medical treatment and other mishaps.  Not all accidents create legal liability. How do you know when someone is legally responsible for an accident?  A legal concept called “Negligence” determines when an accident can result in a legitmate lawsuit.

There are four elements which must be established in order to have a viable Negligence claim: (1) A legal Duty to act carefully; (2) a Breach of the Duty to act carefully; (3) a causal link between the failure to act carefully and some damages (Causation); and (4) actual losses or damages resulting from the failure to act carefully (Damages).

Duty

A Duty is an obligation required by the law to act in a careful and reasonable manner.  For example, the driver of a car has a legal duty to drive carefully, a store  owner has a duty to keep his property in a reasonably safe condition for its patrons and a medical doctor has a legal duty to have the knowledge and exercise the skill that another reasonably careful doctor would under the same circumstances.  In these examples, each person - the driver, the store owner and the doctor - has a legal Duty to be careful and can be held legally liable for not being careful.  On the other hand, if I see someone who is about to get robbed, I have no legal Duty to warn or help that person and cannot be held liable for failing to act.

Breach

Breach of Duty is a failure to exercise reasonable care.  Stated otherwise, Breach of Duty is doing something that a reasonably careful person would not do, or failing to do something that a reasonably careful person would do.  Examples of Breach of Duty would include the following:  driving 75 miles per hour in a 45 zone; a driver turning around to talk to a friend in the back seat while driving in heavy traffic;  a business owner allowing a pothole in a parking lot to go unrepaired for 6 months; or a surgeon failing to remove a sponge from a patient during surgery.

Causation

Liability for Negligence requires a close causal relationship between the Breach of a Duty and some actual loss which results.  If the Breach of Duty contributes to causing and accident and losses, then there will be legal liability.  However, if something else caused the losses, there can be no liability.  For example,  if someone was driving drunk but the other driver caused an accident by running a red light, then even though the first driver was drunk, he was not Negligent and legally liable becuase the accident was not his fault. 

Damages

In order to have a case for Negligence, actual losses or damages must result from the accident.  There must be some actual injury to the victim.  The fact that “someone could have been hurt” is not enough to create legal liability.  Examples:  a driver rear ends your car,  but your car is not damaged and you are not injured; someone slips and falls on snow piled up on the sidewalk, but sustains no injuries; or an Emergency Room doctor fails to diagnose a heart attack, but a family doctor does hours later and the delay in diagnosis causes no injuries.

Sometimes accidents just happen and nobody is at fault.  Other times, accidents are caused by the Negligence of another and there are legal consequences.  The purpose of the law of Negligence is to make sure that a viable lawsuit does not arise in every situation where something bad happens.  Instead, the courts should only be involved when someone had a legal Duty to be careful, Breached that Duty and Caused actual Damages.

Tim Rayne, Esquire - MacElree Harvey, Ltd. 211 E. State Street, Kennett Square, PA 19348   (610) 840-0124   trayne@macelree.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Civil Litigation, Negligence Law. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.