What Is Negligence?
Failure to exercise the care that a reasonably careful person would use in similar circumstances, causing harm to another. It is the most common basis for civil lawsuits in the U.S.
Quick Answer
Failure to exercise the care that a reasonably careful person would use in similar circumstances, causing harm to another. It is the most common basis for civil lawsuits in the U.S.
Full Explanation
Negligence is a tort — a civil wrong — that occurs when someone fails to take reasonable precautions and that failure causes injury to another person. It does not require any intent to cause harm; even purely accidental conduct can be negligent if it falls below the standard of care.
A negligence claim has four elements: (1) Duty — the defendant owed a legal duty of care to the plaintiff. Drivers owe a duty to other road users; doctors owe a duty to their patients; property owners owe duties to visitors. (2) Breach — the defendant violated that duty by acting (or failing to act) as a reasonably prudent person would under the circumstances. (3) Causation — the breach actually caused the plaintiff's injury (actual causation) and was a proximate or foreseeable cause (legal causation). (4) Damages — the plaintiff suffered actual, measurable harm.
The reasonable person standard is objective — courts ask not what this particular defendant would have done, but what a hypothetical reasonably careful person would have done. Professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers) are held to the standard of a reasonably competent member of their profession.
Defenses to negligence include contributory negligence (plaintiff was also at fault), comparative negligence (plaintiff's recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault), and assumption of risk (plaintiff voluntarily accepted a known danger).
Real-World Example
A supermarket employee mops the floor but fails to put up a wet floor sign. A customer slips and breaks her wrist. The supermarket is negligent: it owed a duty to customers, breached it by failing to warn of a hazard, that breach caused the injury, and the customer suffered real harm.
In Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (1928), a railroad employee helped a passenger board a moving train, dislodging fireworks that exploded and knocked over scales that injured Mrs. Palsgraf standing far away. The court held the railroad was not liable because the injury to Palsgraf was not a foreseeable result of the employees' actions — no proximate causation.
Why It Matters for Law Students
Negligence is the bedrock of tort law and one of the most heavily tested topics in law school and on the bar exam. It governs car accidents, medical malpractice, premises liability, and countless other situations. Mastering the four-element framework — duty, breach, causation, damages — is essential for analyzing any torts problem.