Principles Of Negligence Flashcards
What is negligence?
Negligence is a breach of a legal duty to act reasonably that is the direct (or proximate) cause of injury to another.
In nonlegal language, negligence is carelessness that causes harm.
When is a hotel/restaurant liable for guests’ injuries?
The answer depends on whether the establishment violated a legal duty. The hotel or restaurant is not an insurer of guests’ safety. This means the hotel is not liable for all injuries that occur while guests are on the premises. With few exceptions, the hotel or restaurant will only be liable when it does something wrong.
exp: one might trip in the dining room; and did so because the heel on her shoe broke due to shoddy workmanship, the restaurant did not do anything wrong and therefore will not be liable to the guest. If, however, the patron tripped on a hole in the dining room rug, the restaurant may indeed be liable to the guest. Failure to repair the hole was careless; the restaurant could have anticipated that someone would be injured by it. As a result, the restaurant will be liable for the customer’s injury.
Is restaurant/ hotel liable for guests’ injury if it was caused by an employee?
If the cause of a hotel guest’s injuries is the carelessness of an employee, the hotel will be liable to the guest. Managers and employees of restaurants and hotels should strive to act reasonably in the way they perform their duties to avoid liability for negligence.
Elements of a negligence case?
A plaintiff suing in negligence must prove four elements (failure to prove any one of them is fatal to the plaintiff’s case): The existence of a duty to act reasonably owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty, injury to the plaintiff, and proximate cause.
Explain the existence of a Duty to Act Reasonably owed by the defendant to the plaintiff
We do not owe everyone the duty to act reasonably.
We owe the duty only to those people who would foreseeably be injured by our actions. For example, a restaurant can foresee that if the leg of a chair is broken, a patron will sit on the chair and fall. Therefore, the restaurant owes a duty to its guests to repair the chair.
If a restaurant or hotel cannot foresee a particular type of injury, it does not owe a duty to protect patrons against that injury even though someone is in fact injured. Thus, where a club patron was injured when another customer intentionally bumped into her but the club had no way of knowing that the latter presented a risk to customers or had a dangerous propensity, the club was not liable to the injured patron.
Explain breach of duty
For a defendant to be liable for negligence, he must not only owe a duty to the plaintiff to act reasonably, but must also breach that duty. For example, failure by a hotel to maintain floors in its building in a safe condition constitutes a breach of duty to those who utilize the premises.
The issue in each case is whether the defendant acted as a reasonable person of ordinary prudence would have acted under similar circumstances. What constitutes reasonable conduct in a given situation is determined by a jury or, in a bench trial, by the judge.
What is a reasonale person standard?
Determining whether a defendant acted reasonably is not always easy. The law provides a standard to help judge (decide) whether a defendant’s actions were or were not within the bounds of the law. Though difficult to apply in some cases, it is a helpful guide. The standard is a mythical “reasonable person of ordinary prudence”. Sometimes this imaginary person is described, not only as “reasonable” and “prudent”, but also as “a person of average prudence”, or even “a person of ordinary sense using ordinary care and skill”. This person does not have bad days; he is always up to standard, a personification of a community ideal of reasonable behavior.
Explain injury to then plaintiff
To win a lawsuit, a plaintiff must have been injured as a result of the defendant’s breach of duty. The injury might be bodily harm, such as a broken arm or a head wound. The injury could also be property damage, such as a dented car, or it could be emotional suffering or monetary loss.
How many types of injuries in negligence lawsuits?
- Bodily harm
- Property damage
- Emotional suffering
- Monetary loss
Explain proximate cause
The proximate cause of an injury refers to its direct and immediate cause. The requirement of proximate cause to prove negligence means that the injury must have been caused by the breach of duty; in other words, there must be a cause-and-effect relationship between the unreasonable conduct and the injury. The connection also must be direct or immediate, so that a reasonable person could foresee the potential danger of the careless act.
What is an intervening act?
It is well settled that there can be no proximate cause where there has intervened between the acts of the defendants and the injury, an independent act of a third party which was not forseeable to the defendants, which was not triggered by the defendant’s acts, and which was sufficient to itself to cause the injury
What a preexisting condition?
If plaintiff falls due to defendant’s negligence but her injuries constitute a preexisting condition, that is, a physical impairment suffered prior to the fall, defendant’s negligence would not be the proximate cause of the injury. In this circumstance the hotel would not be liable. However, if the hotel’s negligence aggravated an existing injury, it will be liable for the additional injuries it caused.
How does legal status of a plaintiff affect the duty of care owed by the business?
The duty of care owed by a hotel or restaurant for the safety of its patrons varies in many states, depending on the legal status of the person injured. He may be an invitee, a licensee, or a trespasser. The greater degree of care is owed to an invitee, the next greatest to the licensee, and the least to a trespasser.
Talk about duty owed to invitees
In the hospitality industry, an invitee is someone who comes to an establishment for the purpose for which the business is open to the public, or for a purpose directly or indirectly connected with that business.
For a hotel, invitees include guests and visitors of guests. If the hotel has stores or a theater ticket service in the lobby and a nonguest enters to patronize the store or purchase tickets, that person also qualifies as an invitee.
For a restaurant, diners are invitees.
For a bar, patrons are invitees.
For all three types of establishments, employees are invitees, as is a delivery person delivering some item necessary for the business such as food or alcohol.
The hotel or restaurant is not a guarantor of the well-being of its patrons. Instead it owes a duty to its invitees to reasonably inspect the premises for dangerous conditions and to exercise reasonable care to eliminate them.
How is activr vigilance required?
Ignorance on the part of the restaurant of the presence of the dangerous condition will not relieve the hotel or restaurant of liability. The hotel or restaurant has a duty to inspect for the problem and to discover it, and then to protect guests from resulting risks, by eliminating the problem, or at the very least, by warning them of its presence.
