What is negligence?

In this video,

we will introduce negligence.

We'll say Parry is crossing the street

and just then

Dudley comes riding by on his bicycle into the intersection too fast,

and there's an accident

and Parry gets hurt.

In everyday conversation,

we would say that Dudley was careless

and that his carelessness caused the accident.

But if the parties go to court,

we would say that this is a case about negligence.

The defendant is being sued for being negligent.

Negligence is another name

for an unintentional tort.

In law school you'll frequently hear people say

that a plaintiff must prove duty breach causation and damages

to win a negligence claim.

That's a short way of saying that the elements of negligence are

the defendant owed a duty of reasonable care to the plaintiff.

The defendant breached that duty of reasonable care

and as a result of the breach,

the defendant caused damages to the plaintiff.

So, using our bicycle accident as an example,

let's look at the elements of negligence,

duty,

breach,

causation,

and damages.

And we'll start with duty.

By duty we mean that the defendant had an obligation of reasonable care

to avoid causing this type of injury.

To determine whether that obligation exists,

courts will often ask whether the accident and the injury were foreseeable.

In this case,

everyone would probably agree riding a bicycle too

fast through a crosswalk can foreseeably cause an injury

to a pedestrian who is crossing the street.

For this reason,

the element of duty is probably satisfied.

Dudley had a duty of reasonable care to avoid this type of injury to Perry.

Next,

let's look at breach.

To determine whether Dudley breached his duty of reasonable care,

a court will probably compare Dudley

to the reasonable person.

If the defendant's level of care

went below the level of care that we would expect from a reasonable person,

we would say the defendant breached his duty of care.

So, using this chart as an example,

we would say that whenever the red line goes below the blue line,

the defendant breached his duty of care

because he showed less care

than the reasonable person would.

Turning back to our case,

people would probably say that a reasonable

person would not speed through the crosswalk,

and instead,

a cyclist would slow down or stop.

For this reason,

Dudley was not as careful as he should have been.

He was not as careful as the reasonable person,

and therefore

he probably breached his duty of reasonable care.

Next we'll look at causation.

At this point

in its analysis,

a court will ask whether the defendant's breach of his duty of care

caused

the plaintiff's injury.

In fact,

courts discuss two types of causation,

actual cause and proximate cause.

We're not going to discuss those in too much detail.

But actual cause means

if the defendant had done something differently,

would the accident still have occurred.

For proximate cause, we ask whether the defendant's actions were

close enough in time and space to the injury.

Based on the facts as we understand them,

it seems the defendant did cause the accident

because if he had stopped or ridden more slowly,

there would not have been an accident.

So, it looks like the third element of causation is also satisfied.

Now let's look at damages briefly.

It seems that there is no dispute

that the plaintiff was injured as a result of Dudley's actions.

Therefore,

we can say that all four elements of negligence have been satisfied.

We can predict that Perry will win in his lawsuit because

he should be able to prove all four elements of negligence.