What Is Negligence? A Complete Guide to Negligence in Tort Law

What Is Negligence? A Complete Guide to Negligence in Tort Law

Negligence is one of the most important concepts in Tort Law.

It is also one of the most common reasons why people become involved in civil litigation.

Car accidents, medical malpractice, defective property conditions, workplace accidents, professional mistakes, and many other injuries can result from conduct that is not intentional but is nevertheless careless.

Negligence provides the legal framework for determining when that carelessness creates civil liability.

In simple terms:

Negligence occurs when a person fails to exercise the level of care that the law reasonably requires under the circumstances, causing legally recognized harm to another person.

The person who causes the harm does not necessarily need to have intended it.

That is one of the defining characteristics of negligence.

A driver does not have to intend to crash into another vehicle to be negligent.

A doctor does not have to intend to injure a patient to potentially be liable for medical malpractice.

A property owner does not have to intend for a visitor to fall on a dangerous condition for negligence to arise.

The central idea is unreasonable carelessness that causes legally recognized harm.

Negligence is therefore fundamentally different from intentional torts such as assault and battery.

It is also different from criminal wrongdoing.

A person can be negligent without committing a crime.

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The Basic Definition of Negligence

The classic structure of negligence can be expressed through four principal elements:

1. Duty
2. Breach
3. Causation
4. Damages

In simplified form:

Duty

↓

Breach

↓

Causation

↓

Legally Recognized Harm

↓

Negligence Liability

The plaintiff generally must establish the required elements of the negligence claim under the applicable law.

Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute identifies negligence as a failure to exercise the level of care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise under similar circumstances and explains the traditional elements as duty, breach, causation, and damages.

These four elements form the foundation of negligence law.

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What Makes Negligence Different From an Accident?

Not every accident is negligence.

This is an extremely important distinction.

People make mistakes.

Objects fail.

Weather changes.

Unexpected events occur.

Sometimes someone is injured even though everyone involved acted reasonably.

The law does not ordinarily impose liability simply because an accident occurred.

Instead, the central question is:

Did the defendant fail to act with the legally required level of care?

Consider two drivers.

Driver A is traveling at a reasonable speed, obeying traffic laws, maintaining the vehicle properly, and paying attention.

A pedestrian suddenly runs into the road from behind a parked vehicle.

Driver A tries to stop but cannot avoid the collision.

The pedestrian is injured.

An accident occurred.

But the accident alone does not establish negligence.

Now change the facts.

Driver B is traveling far above the speed limit, looking at a phone instead of the road, and fails to notice the pedestrian.

The pedestrian is injured.

Now there may be a strong basis for a negligence claim.

The physical injury may be similar.

The crucial difference is the reasonableness of the defendant’s conduct.

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The Reasonable Person Standard

Negligence law frequently asks what a reasonable person would have done under similar circumstances.

This is known as the reasonable person standard.

The law does not generally ask:

“What would the defendant personally have considered careful?”

Instead, it asks something closer to:

“What would a reasonably prudent person have done under these circumstances?”

This is an objective standard.

For example, suppose a driver is distracted while driving and causes an accident.

The driver might say:

“I personally thought looking at my phone for five seconds was harmless.”

That subjective belief does not necessarily answer the legal question.

The court may instead ask whether a reasonably careful driver would have behaved that way.

If the answer is no, the conduct may constitute a breach of duty.

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Negligence Is Primarily About Conduct, Not Intent

One of the most important features of negligence is that the defendant generally does not need to intend the resulting harm.

Suppose a person accidentally knocks over a heavy object from a balcony.

The person did not intend to hit anyone.

But if a reasonably careful person would have secured the object because it posed an obvious risk to people below, the conduct may be negligent.

The law therefore distinguishes between:

Intentional wrongdoing

and

unreasonable carelessness.

Both can produce civil liability, but they are different tort theories.

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The Four Elements of Negligence

Let’s examine each element separately.

1. Duty

The first question is whether the defendant owed the plaintiff a legal duty of care.

A duty determines whether the defendant was legally required to take reasonable precautions toward the plaintiff.

In many ordinary situations, people owe one another duties of reasonable care.

Drivers, for example, generally owe duties to other road users.

Property owners may owe duties to certain visitors.

Professionals may owe duties to their clients or patients.

Manufacturers may owe duties concerning the safety of products.

But duty is not automatic in every situation.

Questions of duty can become particularly complicated when the plaintiff claims that the defendant should have acted affirmatively to prevent harm.

The existence and scope of duty depend heavily on the applicable jurisdiction and circumstances.

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2. Breach

Once a duty exists, the next question is whether the defendant breached that duty.

A breach generally occurs when the defendant fails to act as a reasonably careful person would have acted under similar circumstances.

For example:

A driver has a duty to operate a vehicle with reasonable care.

The driver texts while driving.

The driver therefore may have breached the duty because texting creates an unreasonable risk of harm.

Breach is consequently about the defendant’s conduct.

The question is not simply whether something went wrong.

It is whether the defendant behaved unreasonably in light of the foreseeable risks.

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3. Causation

Even if the defendant was negligent, negligence liability generally requires a connection between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury.

This is the element of causation.

Causation is often divided into two related concepts:

• actual cause, sometimes called cause-in-fact; and
• proximate cause, or the legal scope of responsibility.

The terminology and formulation vary by jurisdiction.

A simplified example illustrates the idea.

Suppose A drives negligently but never comes near B.

Later, B is injured in an unrelated accident.

A may have breached a duty of care toward other road users, but A’s negligence did not cause B’s injury.

The plaintiff therefore generally must establish the required causal connection.

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4. Damages

Finally, the plaintiff generally must establish legally recognized harm or loss.

Depending on the circumstances, this can include:

• physical injury;
• medical expenses;
• lost wages;
• lost earning capacity;
• property damage;
• pain and suffering;
• emotional distress;
• and other legally compensable losses.

The plaintiff generally cannot recover simply by showing that the defendant behaved carelessly.

There ordinarily must be legally recognized harm connected to that conduct.

This produces an important distinction:

Negligent conduct without legally compensable harm does not necessarily produce a negligence damages award.

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The Negligence Formula

The entire doctrine can be summarized as:

Duty

↓

Breach

↓

Actual Cause

↓

Proximate Cause / Scope of Liability

↓

Damages

↓

Potential Negligence Liability

A plaintiff who cannot establish a required element may fail on the negligence claim.

This structure is extraordinarily useful when analyzing hypothetical problems and real cases.

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A Simple Example

Imagine that a store owner knows that a liquid has spilled on the floor.

The owner does nothing to clean it up or warn customers.

A customer walks through the area, slips, falls, and breaks a leg.

The analysis might proceed as follows.

Duty

The store may owe customers a duty to exercise reasonable care concerning dangerous conditions.

Breach

Leaving a known slippery substance on the floor without taking reasonable precautions may constitute a breach.

Causation

The slippery floor caused the customer’s fall.

Damages

The customer suffered a broken leg and associated losses.

If the applicable legal requirements are satisfied, the store may be liable for negligence.

Notice how the analysis does not require the store owner to have intended the injury.

The central issue is whether the owner’s conduct was unreasonably careless.

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Negligence vs. Intentional Torts

Negligence is fundamentally different from intentional torts.

Consider battery.

Battery generally involves intentional conduct resulting in harmful or offensive contact under the applicable legal standard.

Negligence does not require that the defendant intended the contact.

For example:

Battery

A deliberately punches B.

Negligence

A carelessly knocks a heavy object from a shelf, which strikes B.

The consequences may be similar—B is injured—but the mental state and legal theory are different.

This distinction matters because the elements, defenses, and remedies may differ.

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Negligence vs. Recklessness

Negligence should also be distinguished from recklessness.

Negligence generally involves failure to exercise reasonable care.

Recklessness generally involves a substantially more serious departure from reasonable conduct and often requires conscious disregard of a known or obvious risk, although the precise definition varies by jurisdiction.

Imagine three drivers.

Driver One

Accidentally fails to notice a stop sign because of momentary inattention.

Potentially:

Negligence.

Driver Two

Drives at extremely high speed through a crowded pedestrian area despite recognizing the obvious danger.

Potentially:

Recklessness.

Driver Three

Intentionally drives the vehicle into a person.

Potentially:

Intentional tort and possibly a crime.

The boundaries depend upon the applicable law, but the conceptual progression is useful:

Negligence → Recklessness → Intentional Conduct

These are not interchangeable categories.

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Negligence vs. Criminal Negligence

This distinction is especially important.

Negligence is primarily a civil tort doctrine.

Criminal law can also recognize forms of negligent or reckless conduct, but criminal liability requires the elements established by the applicable criminal statute or common law.

The standards are not automatically identical.

A person may be civilly negligent without being criminally negligent.

For example, a driver may make a careless mistake that causes an accident and creates civil liability without satisfying the substantially more demanding requirements of a criminal offense.

Therefore:

Civil negligence should not automatically be equated with criminal negligence or criminal recklessness.

The fact that someone is negligent does not, by itself, make that person a criminal.

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The Objective Nature of Negligence

The reasonable-person standard is primarily objective.

This means that courts generally evaluate conduct against an external standard rather than simply accepting the defendant’s personal judgment.

Suppose a defendant says:

“I thought I was being careful.”

The statement may be relevant to the facts, but it does not necessarily determine whether the conduct was reasonable.

The court examines the circumstances objectively.

This is one reason negligence law is so closely connected to ideas of reasonableness, foreseeability, risk, and precaution.

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What Does “Reasonable Care” Mean?

Reasonable care does not mean perfect care.

The law does not demand that people eliminate every conceivable risk.

Life contains unavoidable risks.

Instead, negligence law generally asks whether the defendant took reasonable precautions in light of the circumstances.

For example, a driver cannot guarantee that an accident will never occur.

But a reasonably careful driver can:

• obey traffic rules;
• pay attention;
• maintain the vehicle;
• adjust speed to conditions;
• and respond appropriately to foreseeable hazards.

The law therefore evaluates reasonable precautions, not absolute perfection.

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Foreseeability and Risk

Foreseeability plays a major role in negligence analysis.

The more foreseeable a risk is, the stronger the argument may be that reasonable care required the defendant to take precautions against it.

Suppose a store owner knows that a stairway is missing a railing.

The risk of someone falling may be foreseeable.

The owner may therefore be expected to take reasonable precautions.

Now imagine an extraordinarily unusual event that no reasonable person could have anticipated.

The legal analysis may be very different.

Foreseeability does not answer every negligence question, but it is central to many questions involving duty, breach, causation, and scope of liability.

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Risk and Reasonable Precautions

Negligence law does not require every imaginable precaution.

The relevant question is often whether the risk was sufficiently significant that reasonable care required a precaution.

Courts may consider factors such as:

• the probability of harm;
• the seriousness of potential harm;
• the burden or cost of taking precautions;
• the social value of the activity;
• the circumstances confronting the defendant;
• and other factors recognized by the applicable law.

This reflects an underlying idea:

Reasonable care is often a response to foreseeable risk.

The law seeks to distinguish ordinary acceptable risk from unreasonable risk.

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The Reasonable Person Is Not a Perfect Person

The reasonable person is a legal standard, not a real individual.

There is no actual “reasonable person” walking around society whose behavior courts can simply observe.

Instead, the reasonable person is a legal construct used to evaluate conduct.

The standard asks how a reasonably prudent person would have behaved under comparable circumstances.

This makes negligence law flexible.

What is reasonable can depend on:

• the physical environment;
• weather;
• traffic;
• the nature of the activity;
• available information;
• urgency;
• known risks;
• and other circumstances.

Reasonableness is therefore contextual.

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Children and the Reasonable Person Standard

The law may apply different standards to children.

A child is not necessarily expected to behave exactly like a reasonable adult.

In many jurisdictions, children are evaluated according to a standard appropriate to children of similar age, intelligence, and experience.

Special rules may apply when a child engages in an adult activity.

The details vary by jurisdiction.

The broader principle is that the negligence standard can be adapted to particular circumstances rather than mechanically applied.

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Professionals and Specialized Standards

Professionals can also be subject to specialized standards of care.

A physician, lawyer, engineer, architect, accountant, or other professional may be judged according to the professional standards applicable to the circumstances.

Medical negligence, for example, generally requires analysis of the standard of care applicable to the medical professional.

This is why medical malpractice is often treated as a specialized form of negligence.

The basic structure remains recognizable:

Duty → Breach → Causation → Damages

But determining breach may require evidence concerning professional standards and practices.

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Negligence Per Se

One important doctrine associated with negligence is negligence per se.

In jurisdictions recognizing the doctrine, violation of a statute or regulation may sometimes establish or strongly support the breach element when particular requirements are satisfied.

The basic idea is that the legislature has already established a rule intended to protect against a particular type of harm.

For example, suppose a safety statute prohibits conduct specifically because it creates a particular danger.

If the defendant violates the statute and the plaintiff suffers the type of harm the statute was designed to prevent, the statutory violation may have significant consequences in a negligence action.

The exact requirements and effect of negligence per se vary among jurisdictions.

A statutory violation does not automatically create negligence liability in every case.

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Res Ipsa Loquitur

Another important negligence doctrine is res ipsa loquitur, Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”

The doctrine can sometimes allow an inference of negligence when an event ordinarily would not occur without negligence and the circumstances support an inference that the defendant was responsible.

A classic example involves an unusual accident occurring in circumstances where the relevant instrumentality was under the defendant’s control.

The precise requirements differ among jurisdictions.

Res ipsa loquitur does not mean that the plaintiff automatically wins.

Rather, it concerns what may reasonably be inferred from the circumstances when direct evidence of the defendant’s negligent conduct is unavailable.

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Comparative Fault

Negligence law also recognizes that the plaintiff may sometimes have contributed to the harm.

Suppose a driver is negligent, but the injured plaintiff was also acting carelessly.

The legal system may need to determine how responsibility should be allocated.

Many jurisdictions use forms of comparative negligence or comparative fault.

Depending on the jurisdiction, the plaintiff’s recovery may be reduced according to the plaintiff’s share of responsibility, subject to applicable rules.

Some jurisdictions use modified comparative-fault systems, while a small number retain contributory negligence rules.

Therefore, plaintiff conduct can be highly significant in negligence litigation.

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Negligence Is Not Strict Liability

Negligence should also be distinguished from strict liability.

Negligence generally requires proof concerning the defendant’s failure to exercise reasonable care.

Strict liability can impose liability without requiring proof of negligence in circumstances recognized by law.

Examples can include certain:

• abnormally dangerous activities;
• products-liability claims;
• and other specific categories.

The fact that harm occurred does not automatically establish negligence.

The legal theory must be identified first.

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Negligence and Causation

One of the most difficult aspects of negligence is causation.

Suppose a defendant was careless.

That alone is not enough.

The plaintiff must generally establish that the defendant’s conduct caused the legally recognized injury.

Causation becomes particularly difficult when:

• several people contributed to the injury;
• the plaintiff had a pre-existing condition;
• an independent event intervened;
• the injury was unusual;
• multiple accidents occurred;
• or the defendant’s conduct merely increased an existing risk.

These issues lead to doctrines concerning:

• actual cause;
• proximate cause;
• intervening causes;
• superseding causes;
• and scope of liability.

Causation deserves detailed treatment in its own right.

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Damages in Negligence

A successful negligence plaintiff may be entitled to compensation for legally recognized losses.

Depending on the circumstances, these may include:

Economic damages

• medical expenses;
• rehabilitation costs;
• lost wages;
• lost earning capacity;
• repair or replacement costs;
• and other financial losses.

Non-economic damages

• pain and suffering;
• emotional distress;
• loss of enjoyment of life;
• and other legally recognized harms.

Property damage

Damage to a vehicle, building, personal property, or other legally protected property may also be compensable.

The precise categories and limitations vary by jurisdiction.

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Negligence Does Not Always Mean Full Recovery

Even when a defendant was negligent, the plaintiff’s recovery may be affected by other doctrines.

For example:

• comparative fault;
• contributory negligence;
• assumption of risk;
• mitigation of damages;
• causation rules;
• statutes of limitations;
• statutory damages caps;
• and other defenses or limitations

may affect the outcome.

Negligence analysis therefore does not end with:

“The defendant was careless.”

The complete legal analysis asks whether all elements are established and whether any defense or limitation applies.

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The Difference Between Carelessness and Legal Negligence

Everyday language uses “negligent” very loosely.

Someone might say:

“You were negligent—you forgot my birthday.”

That is not what negligence means in tort law.

Legal negligence requires a recognized legal duty, breach of that duty, the required causal connection, and legally recognized harm.

Therefore:

Carelessness in ordinary language ≠ negligence in legal doctrine.

This distinction is essential.

A person can behave carelessly without creating tort liability.

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Negligence as a Balancing of Risk

At a deeper level, negligence law is about how society determines which risks people must reasonably take and which risks they must reasonably prevent.

Human activity inevitably creates risk.

Driving creates risk.

Construction creates risk.

Medical treatment creates risk.

Business activity creates risk.

Even ordinary activities create some risk.

The law does not prohibit all risk.

Instead, negligence law asks whether the defendant’s conduct crossed the boundary between reasonable risk-taking and unreasonable risk creation.

That makes negligence one of the most important mechanisms through which the legal system regulates everyday behavior.

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Why Negligence Is So Important in Tort Law

Negligence occupies a central position in modern Tort Law because it applies to an enormous range of everyday situations.

It can arise in:

• automobile accidents;
• pedestrian accidents;
• premises liability;
• medical malpractice;
• professional malpractice;
• workplace accidents;
• construction accidents;
• product-related injuries;
• transportation accidents;
• negligent hiring or supervision;
• and many other contexts.

It provides a general framework for deciding when one person’s failure to take reasonable care should result in legal responsibility for another person’s injury.

This makes negligence fundamentally different from highly specific intentional torts.

Negligence is not concerned with one particular type of wrongful act.

It is a broad theory of responsibility based on unreasonable risk and resulting harm.

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A Complete Negligence Hypothetical

Consider the following example.

A restaurant employee mops the floor near the entrance.

The employee knows the floor is wet but does not place a warning sign.

A customer enters the restaurant, slips, falls, and breaks a wrist.

The negligence analysis might look like this:

Duty

The restaurant owes customers applicable duties of reasonable care.

Breach

Leaving a known wet floor without a warning or other reasonable precaution may constitute a breach.

Actual causation

Without the dangerous condition, the customer might not have fallen.

Proximate cause

The customer’s fall may be a foreseeable consequence of leaving a wet floor without warning.

Damages

The customer suffered a physical injury and associated losses.

If the applicable law supports each element, the restaurant may be liable for negligence.

This example illustrates the basic architecture of negligence law.

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Negligence vs. Criminal Conduct: An Essential Boundary

Because negligence frequently involves dangerous conduct, it is important not to confuse civil negligence with criminal responsibility.

Suppose a driver looks away from the road for several seconds and causes an accident.

The driver may be civilly negligent.

But whether the driver committed a crime depends upon the applicable criminal statute and the required level of culpability.

Criminal law generally demands more than simply showing that someone failed to exercise ordinary reasonable care.

This distinction follows the broader principle established earlier:

A tort is not automatically a crime.

Negligence is perhaps the clearest example.

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Negligence vs. Contractual Breach

Negligence should also be distinguished from breach of contract.

Suppose a contractor promises to complete a project by June 1 but finishes on June 20.

That may be a breach of contract.

It does not automatically constitute negligence.

Now suppose that while performing the project, the contractor carelessly drops equipment onto a passerby and causes injury.

That may constitute negligence because the duty to exercise reasonable care toward the passerby exists independently of the contractual promise.

The same factual situation can therefore contain both contractual and tort issues.

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The Negligence Analysis in Five Questions

When confronted with a potential negligence claim, begin with five questions:

1. Did the defendant owe the plaintiff a duty?

If not, the negligence claim may fail at the first step.

2. What standard of care applied?

What would reasonable conduct have required under the circumstances?

3. Did the defendant breach that standard?

Was the defendant’s conduct unreasonable?

4. Did the breach cause the plaintiff’s legally recognized harm?

Both factual causation and the applicable scope-of-liability rules must be considered.

5. What damages resulted?

The plaintiff must identify legally compensable harm.

This five-question framework provides an excellent starting point for almost every negligence problem.

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A Broader Map of Negligence Law

Negligence can be divided into many specialized areas.

The core doctrine leads naturally to:

• Duty of Care
• Breach of Duty
• Reasonable Person Standard
• Foreseeability
• Actual Cause
• Proximate Cause
• Intervening and Superseding Causes
• Damages
• Comparative Negligence
• Contributory Negligence
• Assumption of Risk
• Negligence Per Se
• Res Ipsa Loquitur
• Professional Negligence
• Medical Malpractice
• Premises Liability
• Negligent Hiring and Supervision
• Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
• Product-Related Negligence
• Governmental and Municipal Negligence
• Economic Loss and Negligence

These doctrines build upon the basic four-part structure introduced here.

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Key Takeaways

• Negligence is one of the central doctrines of Tort Law.
• It generally concerns failure to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances.
• The traditional elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages.
• Negligence does not require the defendant to have intended the plaintiff’s injury.
• Not every accident is negligence.
• Not every careless act creates legal liability.
• The reasonable person standard is central to determining breach.
• Foreseeability and risk are important in many negligence analyses.
• Causation requires a legally sufficient connection between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s harm.
• Damages must generally be legally recognized and attributable to the defendant’s conduct.
• Negligence is different from intentional torts such as assault and battery.
• Negligence is different from recklessness and intentional wrongdoing.
• Civil negligence should not automatically be confused with criminal negligence.
• Negligence is different from strict liability.
• Statutory violations can sometimes support negligence-per-se theories.
• Res ipsa loquitur can sometimes permit an inference of negligence from the circumstances of an accident.
• Comparative fault may reduce a plaintiff’s recovery where the plaintiff also contributed to the harm.
• A contractual relationship does not necessarily eliminate independent tort duties.
• The central question is whether the defendant failed to take reasonable care in circumstances where the law imposed a duty of care, and that failure caused legally recognized harm.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is negligence in tort law?

Negligence is generally a civil wrong arising when a person who owes a legal duty of reasonable care fails to meet the required standard of care and thereby causes legally recognized harm.

What are the four elements of negligence?

The traditional elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages.

Does negligence require intent?

No. Unlike intentional torts, negligence generally does not require the defendant to intend the harmful result.

Is every accident negligence?

No. An accident can occur even when everyone acted reasonably. Negligence generally requires a failure to exercise legally required reasonable care.

What is the reasonable person standard?

It is an objective legal standard used to evaluate whether the defendant acted with the level of care that a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under similar circumstances.

Can someone be negligent without committing a crime?

Yes. Civil negligence does not automatically constitute criminal conduct.

Can negligence and breach of contract occur together?

Yes. A party may breach a contractual obligation while also violating an independent duty imposed by tort law.

What is negligence per se?

Negligence per se is a doctrine under which violation of a statute or regulation may, when the applicable requirements are satisfied, establish or support the breach element of a negligence claim.

What is res ipsa loquitur?

Res ipsa loquitur is a doctrine that can sometimes allow negligence to be inferred from the circumstances of an accident when direct evidence of the defendant’s conduct is unavailable.

What is the difference between negligence and recklessness?

Negligence generally involves failure to exercise reasonable care. Recklessness generally involves a more serious disregard of a known or obvious risk. The precise definitions vary by jurisdiction.

What is the difference between negligence and an intentional tort?

Negligence generally does not require intent to cause the harmful result. Intentional torts generally require the mental state specified by the particular tort.

Can a person be liable for negligence without physically touching the plaintiff?

Yes. Negligence can cause harm through conduct that never involves physical contact between the defendant and plaintiff.

What kinds of damages can negligence cause?

Depending on the circumstances, damages may include medical expenses, lost income, property damage, pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other legally recognized losses.

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Further Reading

For an authoritative overview of negligence, see the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (LII), Wex: Negligence.

Cornell Law School — Legal Information Institute: Negligence

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Conclusion

Negligence is the central language of modern Tort Law for dealing with harm caused by carelessness.

It does not require intentional wrongdoing.

It does not require a contract.

And it does not necessarily require criminal conduct.

Instead, negligence asks whether a person who owed a legal duty failed to exercise reasonable care, and whether that failure caused legally recognized harm.

The basic structure is simple:

Duty + Breach + Causation + Damages = Negligence Claim

But each of those four words contains an extensive body of law.

What constitutes a duty?

What makes conduct unreasonable?

How should a court determine what a reasonable person would have done?

When is a risk foreseeable?

How do we determine whether the defendant actually caused the injury?

When does an intervening event break the chain of causation?

What happens when the plaintiff was also careless?

And how should damages be calculated?

These questions transform the seemingly simple idea of “carelessness” into one of the most sophisticated areas of civil law.

For that reason, negligence should be understood not as a single rule but as a framework for allocating responsibility for unreasonable risks and the harm they cause.

The next step is therefore to examine the first element in detail:

Duty of Care.

Before asking whether someone behaved negligently, we must first ask the foundational question:

Did the law require that person to take reasonable care toward this particular plaintiff?