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.
The right of self-defense is the right for people to use reasonable force or defensive force, for the purpose of defending one's own life (self-defense) or the lives of others, including –in certain circumstances– the use of deadly force.
Deadly force, also known as lethal force, is use of force that is likely to cause serious bodily injury or death to another person. In most jurisdictions, the use of deadly force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort, when all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed.
In the criminal law of many nations, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. Defendants seeking to rely on this defense argue that they should not be held liable for their actions as a crime because their conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm and when that conduct is not excused under some other more specific provision of law such as self defense. Except for a few statutory exemptions and in some medical cases there is no corresponding defense in English law for murder.
The urban survival syndrome, in United States jurisprudence, can be used either as a defense of justification or of excuse. The first case using, unsuccessfully, the defense of "urban survival syndrome" is the 1994 Fort Worth, Texas murder trial of Daimion Osby.
In law, a reasonable person, reasonable man, or the man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical person of legal fiction crafted by the courts and communicated through case law and jury instructions.
A castle doctrine, also known as a castle law or a defense of habitation law, is a legal doctrine that designates a person's abode or any legally occupied place as a place in which that person has protections and immunities permitting one, in certain circumstances, to use force to defend oneself against an intruder, free from legal prosecution for the consequences of the force used. The term is most commonly used in the United States, though many other countries invoke comparable principles in their laws.
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.
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, 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.
Volenti non fit iniuria is a common law doctrine which states that if someone willingly places themselves in a position where harm might result, knowing that some degree of harm might result, they are not able to bring a claim against the other party in tort or delict. Volenti applies only to the risk which a reasonable person would consider them as having assumed by their actions; thus a boxer consents to being hit, and to the injuries that might be expected from being hit, but does not consent to his opponent striking him with an iron bar, or punching him outside the usual terms of boxing. Volenti is also known as a "voluntary assumption of risk."
In the USA, the rescue doctrine of the law of torts holds that if a tortfeasor creates a circumstance that places the tort victim in danger, the tortfeasor is liable not only for the harm caused to the victim, but also the harm caused to any person injured in an effort to rescue that victim. This doctrine was originally promulgated by Benjamin N. Cardozo in the 1921 case, Wagner v. Int'l Ry. Co. There, writing for the Court of Appeals of New York, Cardozo stated: "Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief [...] The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had." The rescue doctrine was established nineteen years later, in the landmark case of Cote v. Palmer.
Causation is the "causal relationship between the defendant's conduct and end result". In other words, causation provides a means of connecting conduct with a resulting effect, typically an injury. In criminal law, it is defined as the actus reus from which the specific injury or other effect arose and is combined with mens rea to comprise the elements of guilt. Causation only applies where a result has been achieved and therefore is immaterial with regard to inchoate offenses.
Self-defence is a legal doctrine which says that a person may use reasonable force in the defence of one's self or another. This defence arises both from common law and the Criminal Law Act 1967. Self-defence is a justification rather than an excuse, saying that a person's actions were not a crime at all.
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 in both English criminal law, and in civil law, where it is relevant to English contract law and English trusts law.
In the state of Maryland, the right of self-defense is mostly governed by case law, but there is also a statute.
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:
Necessitas non habet legem; "Necessity knows no law." This well-known maxim reflects the theoretical basis of the defence of necessity: that in dire circumstances of looming peril, the claims of positive law seems to weaken. Canadian criminal law allows for a common law defence of necessity. This controversial common law or judge-made defence has only been firmly recognized in Canadian law since 1984. It is recognized in Canada as a defence for crimes committed in urgent situations of clear and imminent peril in which the accused has no safe avenue of escape or legal way out of the situation. There is an objective or reasonableness requirement that requires the accused to reasonably resist the pressures that led to the commission of the crime. Anyone is entitled, by virtue of s.8(3) of the Criminal Code, to rely upon any excuse or defense available to him at common law. The exception to this is, as per s.8(1) The provisions of this Act apply throughout Canada except (a) in Yukon, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Yukon Act; (b) in the Northwest Territories, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Northwest Territories Act, and (c) in Nunavut, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Nunavut Act.
Responsibility for criminal law and criminal justice in the United States is shared between the states and the federal government.
The South African law of delict engages primarily with "the circumstances in which one person can claim compensation from another for harm that has been suffered." JC Van der Walt and Rob Midgley define a delict "in general terms [...] as a civil wrong," and more narrowly as "wrongful and blameworthy conduct which causes harm to a person." Importantly, however, the civil wrong must be an actionable one, resulting in liability on the part of the wrongdoer or tortfeasor.
Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 (1977), is a United States Supreme Court criminal law decision holding that a police officer ordering a person out of a car following a traffic stop and conducting a pat-down to check for weapons did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
