Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate care expected to be exercised in similar circumstances.
In law, a reasonable person, reasonable man, or the man on the Clapham omnibus, is a hypothetical person whose character and care conduct, under any common set of facts, is decided through reasoning of good practice or policy. It is a legal fiction crafted by the courts and communicated through case law and jury instructions. In some practices, for circumstances arising from an uncommon set of facts, this person represents a composite of a relevant community's judgement as to how a typical member of that community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm to the public.
In criminal law, criminal negligence is an offence that involves a breach of an objective standard of behaviour expected of a defendant. It may be contrasted with strictly liable offences, which do not consider states of mind in determining criminal liability, or offenses that requires mens rea, a mental state of guilt.
Bicycle law in California is the parts of the California Vehicle Code that set out the law for persons cycling in California, and a subset of bicycle law in the United States. In general, pretty much all the same rights and responsibilities that apply to car drivers apply to bicycle riders as well.
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.
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care to avoid careless acts that could foreseeably harm others, and lead to claim in negligence. 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 that 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.
English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil law, rather than criminal law, that usually requires a payment of money to make up for damage that is caused. Alongside contracts and unjust enrichment, tort law is usually seen as forming one of the three main pillars of the law of obligations.
As low as reasonably practicable (ALARP), or as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), is a principle in the regulation and management of safety-critical and safety-involved systems. The principle is that the residual risk shall be reduced as far as reasonably practicable. In UK and NZ Health and safety law, it is equivalent to so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP). In the US, ALARA is used in the regulation of radiation risks.
In criminal law and in the law of tort, recklessness may be defined as the state of mind where a person deliberately and unjustifiably pursues a course of action while consciously disregarding any risks flowing from such action. Recklessness is less culpable than malice, but is more blameworthy than carelessness.
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that as of 2011 defines the fundamental structure and authority for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare within the United Kingdom.
Duress in English law is a complete common law defence, operating in favour of those who commit crimes because they are forced or compelled to do so by the circumstances, or the threats of another. The doctrine arises not only in criminal law but also in civil law, where it is relevant to contract law and trusts law.
Expectation damages are damages recoverable from a breach of contract by the non-breaching party. An award of expectation damages protects the injured party's interest in realising the value of the expectancy that was created by the promise of the other party. Thus, the impact of the breach on the promisee is to be effectively "undone" with the award of expectation damages.
A job safety analysis (JSA) is a procedure that helps integrate accepted safety and health principles and practices into a particular task or job operation. The goal of a JSA is to identify potential hazards of a specific role and recommend procedures to control or prevent these hazards.
The Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that covers occupiers' liability for trespassers. In British Railways Board v Herrington 1972 AC 877, the House of Lords had decided that occupiers owed a duty to trespassers, but the exact application of the decision was unclear. The matter was then referred to the Law Commission for a report, and as a result the Occupiers' Liability Bill was introduced to Parliament by Lord Hailsham on 23 June 1983. The Act was given the royal assent on 13 March 1984 as the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 and came into force on 13 May.
Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the traditional, common-law-derived "knock and announce" rule for executing search warrants must be incorporated into the "reasonableness" analysis of whether the actual execution of the warrant is/was justified under the 4th Amendment. The high court thus ruled that the old "knock and announce" rule while not a hard requirement, was also not a dead letter.
The Penal Law of the State of New York combines justification and necessity into a single article, Article 35. "Defense of Justification" comprises sections 35.05 through 35.30 of the Penal Law. The general provision relating to necessity, section 35.05, provides:
§ 35.05 Justification; generally.
Unless otherwise limited by the ensuing provisions of this article defining justifiable use of physical force, conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when:
MRR v GR was an Australian family law case concerning who the child should live with where the father wanted to remain living in Mount Isa, Queensland while the mother wanted to return to live in Sydney, NSW. The Family Law Act 1975 makes the "best interests of the child" the paramount consideration when making a parenting order. The High Court of Australia decided that a Federal Magistrate erred by failing to consider the "reasonable practicability" of a parenting order with an equal time arrangement that required the mother to live in Mount Isa. The matter was decided on 3 December 2009 with reasons subsequently published on 3 March 2010.
South African criminal law is the body of national law relating to crime in South Africa. In the definition of Van der Walt et al., a crime is "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted." Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.
The civil liability of a recreational diver may include a duty of care to another diver during a dive. Breach of this duty that is a proximate cause of injury or loss to the other diver may lead to civil litigation for damages in compensation for the injury or loss suffered.
Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of force by police officers during high-speed car chases. After first holding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case, the Court held that the conduct of the police officers involved in the case did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
