Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. The core concept of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care in their actions, by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people or property.
Res ipsa loquitur is a doctrine in the Anglo-American common law and Roman-Dutch law that says in a tort or civil lawsuit a court can infer negligence from the very nature of an accident or injury in the absence of direct evidence on how any defendant behaved. Although modern formulations differ by jurisdiction, Anglo-American common law originally stated that the accident must satisfy the necessary elements of negligence: duty, breach of duty, causation, and injury. In res ipsa loquitur, the elements of duty of care, breach, and causation are inferred from an injury that does not ordinarily occur without negligence.
This article addresses torts in United States law. As such, it covers primarily common law. Moreover, it provides general rules, as individual states all have separate civil codes. There are three general categories of torts: intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability torts.
Bolton v. Stone[1951] AC 850, [1951] 1 All ER 1078 is a leading House of Lords case in the tort of negligence, establishing that a defendant is not negligent if the damage to the plaintiff was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of his conduct. The plaintiff was hit by a cricket ball which had been hit out of the ground; the defendants were members of the club committee.
Byrne v Boadle is an English tort law case that first applied the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation which is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The claimant must be able to show a duty of care imposed by law which the defendant has breached. In turn, breaching a duty may subject an individual to liability. The duty of care may be imposed by operation of law between individuals who have no current direct relationship but eventually become related in some manner, as defined by common law.
Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582 is an English tort law case that lays down the typical rule for assessing the appropriate standard of reasonable care in negligence cases involving skilled professionals such as doctors. This rule is known as the Bolam test, and states that if a doctor reaches the standard of a responsible body of medical opinion, they are not negligent. Bolam was rejected in the 2015 Supreme Court decision of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board in matters of informed consent.
In English tort law, there can be no liability in negligence unless the claimant establishes both that they were owed a duty of care by the defendant, and that there has been a breach of that duty. The defendant is in breach of duty towards the claimant if their conduct fell short of the standard expected under the circumstances.
Causation in English law concerns the legal tests of remoteness, causation and foreseeability in the tort of negligence. It is also relevant for English criminal law and English contract law.
Christopher Palles, was an Irish barrister, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and a judge for over 40 years. His biographer V.T.H. Delany describes him as "the greatest of the Irish judges". He served as the last Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer from 1874 until his retirement from the bench in 1916.
Hotson v East Berkshire Area Health Authority [1987] 2 All ER 909 is an English tort law case, about the nature of causation. It rejects the idea that people can sue doctors for the loss of a chance to get better, when doctors fail to do as good a job as they could have done.
Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 24 Cal.2d 453, 150 P.2d 436 (1944), was a decision of the Supreme Court of California involving an injury caused by an exploding bottle of Coca-Cola. It was an important case in the development of the common law of product liability in the United States, not so much for the actual majority opinion, but for the concurring opinion of California Supreme Court justice Roger Traynor.
Ybarra v. Spangard was a leading case in California discussing the exclusive control element of res ipsa loquitur. "Where a plaintiff receives unusual injuries while unconscious and in the course of medical treatment, all those defendants who had any control over his body or the instrumentalities which might have caused the injuries may properly be called upon to meet the inference of negligence by giving an explanation of their conduct."
Alternative liability is a legal doctrine that allows a plaintiff to shift the burden of proving causation of her injury to multiple defendants, even though only one of them could have been responsible. The typical case showing the principle of alternative liability in action is Summers v. Tice, where the two defendants negligently shot in the direction of the plaintiff and two pellets caused the plaintiff's injury, one in the right eye and one in the upper lip. In the interest of justice, the innocent plaintiff's case is not defeated because he cannot prove which party was the actual cause of his injury.
Weir-Rodgers v SF Trust Ltd [2005] IESC 2 is a reported decision of the Irish Supreme Court that confirmed that under Section 4 of the Occupiers Liability Act 1995 an occupier of land is not required to take all reasonable care to safeguard the person or property of either trespassers or recreational users.
Gilroy v Flynn [2004] IESC 98; [2005] 1 ILRM 290, was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court made it clear that excessive delays in the delivery of a statement of claim were unacceptable and could justify dismissing a case. While the Court allowed the appeal against the High Court central to this case to proceed, it effectively reversed the previous "assumption that even grave delay will not lead to the dismissal of an action" even where the fault of the delay lay with a legal adviser rather than the plaintiff.
O'Connell & anor v The Turf Club, [2015] IESC 57, [2017] 2 IR 43 is an Irish Supreme Court case which explored the scope of judicial review in Ireland. It addressed whether the decisions of a sport's organizing body should be amenable to judicial review. In deciding that it was, this decision became a useful reminder that it is not only bodies created by statute, which are generally considered to be subject to public law, that are amenable to Judicial Review by the Courts.
Delahunty v Player and Wills (Ireland) Ltd, [2006] 1 IR 304; [2006] IESC 21 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court gave a woman permission to take action for damages against two major tobacco companies in what was the first step in the battle against 'Big tobacco'.
K. (C.) v. K. (J.)[2004] IESC 21; [2004] 1 IR 224, is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the doctrine of estoppel could not be used to change the status of a person, when the status, as a matter of law, never actually changed.
Philp v Ryan & Anor [2004] IESC 105 is an Irish tort law case concerning the actionability of the 'loss of chance' doctrine in medical negligence. Contrary to the position in England and Wales consolidated in Gregg v Scott, the Supreme Court of Ireland awarded compensation to the plaintiff for their loss of life expectancy caused by the defendant's negligence, despite the lack of proof on the balance of probabilities that Mr Philp would have otherwise recovered.
