Negligence occurs when someone suffers injury because another’s failure to live up to a
required duty of care. Negligence is an unintentional tort, which the tortfeasor neither wishes to
bring the consequences of the act nor believes that they will occur. In this case, we have Ruth
who carelessly parked her car.
You will recall from the chapter that four elements must be proved for a plaintiff to
recover in a claim for negligence: that the defendant owed a duty of care, the defendant breached
this duty, the plaintiff suffered a legally recognizable injury, and the defendant’s breach of the
duty of care caused the injury. Central to the tort of negligence is the concept of duty of care.
This concept arises from the notion that if we are to live in society with other people, some
actions can be tolerated and some cannot, and some actions are reasonable and some are not. The
basic principle underlying the duty of care is that people are free to act as they please so long as
their actions do not infringe on the interests of others.
When someone fails to comply with the duty to exercise reasonable care, a potentially
tortious act may have been committed. Failure to live up to a standard of care may be an act or
an omission. Courts consider the nature of the act, the manner in which the act is performed, and
the nature of the injury in determining whether the duty of care has been breached.
Tort law measures duty by the reasonable person standard. In determining whether a duty
of care has been breached, for example, the courts ask how a reasonable person would have acted
in the same circumstances. The reasonable person standard is said to be objective. It is not
necessarily how a particular person would act. It is society’s judgment of how an ordinarily
practical person should act. If the so-called reasonable person existed, he or she would be
careful, conscientious, even tempered, and honest. In negligence cases, the degree of care to be
exercised varies. Generally, whether an action constitutes a breach of the duty of care is
