Negligence: Duty and Standard of Care: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Torts Topic 3, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The plaintiff must establish duty, breach, causation, and legally cognizable harm. Failure of proof on any one element defeats the claim, so courts analyze each element separately.
Reasonable Prudent Person Standard
Conduct is measured against what an ordinarily prudent person would do under the same external circumstances, not against the defendant's own good faith, temperament, or best personal judgment.
Vaughan v. Menlove
English case holding that a defendant whose hayrick ignited could not answer with his own low intelligence; the standard is what a person of ordinary prudence would have observed.
Physical Disability Allowance
A defendant with a physical impairment such as blindness is judged as a reasonable person with that same impairment, because physical limits are objectively verifiable and beyond the actor's control.
Breunig v. American Family Insurance
Wisconsin case allowing a narrow defense where a sudden, unforeseeable mental delusion deprived the driver of any ability to control the vehicle; foreseeable episodes give no excuse.
Child Standard of Care
A minor is generally held to the care expected of a child of like age, intelligence, maturity, and experience, a partly subjective test reflecting developmental capacity.
Adult Activity Exception
When a child engages in an inherently dangerous activity normally undertaken by adults, such as driving a car or snowmobile, the full adult objective standard applies.
Superior Skill or Knowledge
An actor possessing expertise above the ordinary must use it; the standard rises with special training or knowledge, though below-average ability never lowers the standard.
Emergency Doctrine
A sudden unexpected peril not of the actor's own making is part of the circumstances the jury weighs; the actor is still judged as a reasonable person facing that emergency.
Professional Standard of Care
Professionals are measured by the knowledge, skill, and care ordinarily possessed by members of their profession in good standing, a standard normally proved by expert testimony.
National Standard for Physicians
Most modern jurisdictions have abandoned the strict locality rule and judge physicians against nationally accepted practice, softened at most by consideration of available resources.
Informed Consent
A distinct negligence theory holding that a physician must disclose the nature of a proposed treatment, its material risks, and reasonable alternatives before the patient decides.
Canterbury v. Spence
Leading decision adopting the patient-oriented rule: disclosure is measured by what a reasonable patient would find material, not by what physicians customarily reveal.
Professional Disclosure Rule
The competing minority approach in informed consent, under which the scope of required disclosure is set by customary medical practice and must be proved by expert testimony.
Industry Custom Evidence
Proof of what others in the trade usually do is admissible and probative on the standard of care, but it neither conclusively establishes nor conclusively refutes reasonable conduct.
The T.J. Hooper
Tugboat case in which Judge Hand held that an entire industry may lag behind reasonable prudence; failing to carry working radios was negligent despite general custom.
Duty as a Question of Law
Whether the defendant owed any obligation to the plaintiff is decided by the judge as a policy matter, unlike breach, which the jury resolves on the facts.
Misfeasance versus Nonfeasance
Active conduct creating risk generally triggers a duty of reasonable care, while mere failure to act for another's benefit historically triggers none absent a recognized exception.
No Duty to Rescue Rule
At common law a bystander owes no obligation to aid a stranger in peril, however easy the rescue, unless a relationship, undertaking, or risk creation supplies a duty.
Erie Railroad v. Stewart
A railroad that voluntarily maintained a crossing watchman assumed a duty of reasonable care; withdrawing the customary protection without warning could be negligence.
Special Relationship Duty
Affirmative duties of protection arise from relationships such as carrier and passenger, innkeeper and guest, employer and employee, custodian and ward, or business and invitee.
Tarasoff Duty to Warn
A therapist who determines that a patient poses a serious danger of violence to an identifiable victim must use reasonable care to protect that person, which may include warning.
Landowner Duty Categories
The traditional trichotomy scales the possessor's obligation by the entrant's status, with the least protection for trespassers and the greatest for business invitees.
Attractive Nuisance Doctrine
A possessor may be liable for injuries to child trespassers from an artificial condition the possessor knows children are likely to encounter and cannot appreciate the danger of.
Rowland v. Christian
California decision abolishing the entrant categories and applying a single reasonable care standard to possessors, weighing foreseeability, burden, and other policy factors.