Breach and Proof of Negligence: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Torts Topic 4, 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 defendant's conduct falls below the applicable standard of care; it is a question of fact ordinarily left to the jury once the court has fixed the governing legal standard.
Hand Formula
An algebraic framing of reasonableness: an actor is negligent if the burden of taking a precaution is less than the probability of harm multiplied by the gravity of that harm.
United States v. Carroll Towing
Barge case in which Judge Hand articulated the cost-benefit formulation of negligence and found the absence of a bargee during business hours unreasonable.
Burden of Precaution
The cost, inconvenience, and lost utility of an untaken safety measure; a heavy burden may make an omission reasonable even where some risk remains.
Foreseeability of Harm
Risk that a reasonable person would have anticipated shapes breach analysis, since precautions are demanded only against dangers reasonably apparent in advance.
Custom as Evidence of Reasonable Care
Evidence of trade practice helps the jury assess what is feasible and expected, but a defendant who follows custom may still be found unreasonable.
Medical Custom Standard
In most malpractice actions the customary practice of the profession sets the standard itself rather than merely evidencing it, which is why expert proof is required.
Negligence Per Se
Unexcused violation of a safety statute establishes the standard of conduct and breach where the plaintiff falls within the protected class and suffers the type of harm targeted.
Osborne v. McMasters
Early decision holding that a statutory command may be borrowed to define the duty owed, with violation itself constituting negligence at common law.
Martin v. Herzog
Cardozo opinion treating the unexcused omission of statutory lights on a buggy as negligence in itself rather than merely some evidence of negligence.
Class of Persons Requirement
The statute must have been enacted to protect a group that includes the plaintiff; otherwise its violation does not supply the standard in that plaintiff's suit.
Type of Harm Requirement
The injury suffered must be among the hazards the legislature sought to prevent, a limit illustrated by cases about animals washed overboard rather than infected.
Excused Statutory Violation
Courts recognize excuses including incapacity, ignorance of the occasion for compliance, inability after reasonable diligence, emergency, and greater risk from compliance.
Tedla v. Ellman
Pedestrians who walked on the right against a statute were excused because complying with the rule would have exposed them to heavier traffic and greater danger.
Licensing Statute Violation
Practicing without a required license usually does not itself prove substandard performance, since the licensing rule addresses qualification rather than the specific conduct.
Statutory Compliance Evidence
Meeting a regulatory minimum is relevant but does not conclusively establish due care; a jury may still find that reasonable prudence demanded more.
Res Ipsa Loquitur
A doctrine permitting an inference of negligence where the accident is of a kind that ordinarily does not occur absent negligence and is attributable to the defendant.
Byrne v. Boadle
Flour barrel falling from a warehouse window; the court held the occurrence itself supported an inference of negligence without direct proof of what went wrong.
Ybarra v. Spangard
Unconscious surgical patient injured in the shoulder; the court extended the doctrine against multiple defendants who had control over the patient or the instruments.
Exclusive Control Requirement
Traditionally the instrumentality must have been under the defendant's management, a demand modern courts relax to asking whether other causes are sufficiently eliminated.
Larson v. St. Francis Hotel
Armchair thrown from a hotel window during a celebration; the doctrine failed because the hotel did not control the guest rooms or the third party who threw it.
Permissible Inference Effect
In most states the doctrine merely allows but does not compel the jury to find negligence; a minority give it presumption force shifting the burden to the defendant.
Circumstantial Evidence
Proof of facts from which the jury may reasonably infer the disputed fact of unreasonable conduct, the ordinary vehicle for proving breach without eyewitness testimony.
Actual Notice
Direct awareness by the premises occupier of a specific hazardous condition, established by employee observation, complaints, or the occupier having created the danger.
Constructive Notice
A defect visible and apparent for long enough that a reasonably diligent occupier should have discovered and corrected it before the plaintiff was hurt.