Other Principles of Negligence to Prove Breach of Duty

Accidents happen due to a single cause – negligence. Negligence is defined by law as failure to demonstrate ordinary care toward another person because of an act or omission of an act. Negligence will occur when a person fails to exercise the same amount of care that a reasonable individual will do under certain circumstance. It also occurs when a person does something that a reasonable individual will not do under certain circumstance. 

In personal injury lawsuits, negligence needs to be determined first before the due damages should be awarded. The general criteria to evaluate a negligent conduct that requires a plaintiff to prove are the following factors of “preponderance of evidence”: 

• The accused or the responsible party owed a duty of care to the injured person (or duty to the general public.)
• The accused person violated the required duty of care.
• As a result to the failure to abide reasonable care, the plaintiff suffered an injury.
• The injury incurred was reasonably foreseeable outcome of accused person's action or inaction.

Gross Negligence

This type of negligence is a conduct that fails to act reasonably and become so reckless, that the act that is demonstrated has substantial lack of care of whether a damage will occur or not. In personal injury lawsuits, it is sometimes crucial to determine “gross negligence” as contradictory to “ordinary negligence” in order to pursue a lawsuit. 

Children and Negligence

Children especially minors are held to different level of duty than adults do. For instance, the minor's negligence may be determined as to how much careful the minor of the same age, in terms of experience and mental capacity that could be exercise under similar circumstances. Too young minors are generally presumed to be not capable of abiding the required duty of care.

Comparative Negligence

Under comparative negligence, more than one person could be found guilty to cause a motor vehicle accident, pedestrian accidents, and slips and falls accident. It is usually common in determining two people, both the plaintiff and the defendant, to be careless at the same time that resulted to an accident. For instance, the jury may find one person to be 90% at fault and another is only 10%. The punitive damages will be based on the percentage of the fault that the defendant or plaintiff may have. If the injured person, most likely be the plaintiff, has to receive $100,000 in the case, he would receive $90,000 of the compensation and the defendant may receive $10,000. This is why comparative negligence law is a much fairer justice system in America. 

Contributory Negligence

This negligence principle is much stronger than comparative negligence. The contributory negligence may apply when the plaintiff or the injured party is one way or another contributes to his own injury, he may be barred from receiving any compensation. Because of the extreme consequence of this type of approach, this principle has been limited and even abandoned in many states.

Mixed Contributory and  Comparative Negligence

Some states follow the mixed principles of contributory and comparative negligence, where an injured person who may have less than fifty per cent at fault could recover compensation. However, an injured person or plaintiff who has more than fifty per cent at fault may no longer recover compensation, or may recover compensation only a portion of economic damages against the defendant.

If you want to know more about the other principles of negligence that might be very helpful to your situation, contact a Florida Injury Attorney.