Business Law

Standard of Care

The duty of care is the legal obligation to maintain a certain standard. The standard of care is the specific standard of conduct that is imposed by law upon an individual which, if violated, could result in liability of some sort or another.

This standard was determined to be constitutionally acceptable.

All negligent tort actions focus on the issue what the standard of care was and whether the defendant fell below that standard. The standard is judged in relation to the "reasonable person" and whether the defendant acted in the same manner as any rational person in society would.

This standard is very ephemeral and does not provide a clear or objective criteria for judging. The standard changes depending on the assumed knowledge and experience of the defendant; for example, a professional will be held to a higher level than a normal person.

Moreover the level of risk involved plays a major role in establishing the standard of care. The likelihood of harm resulting from the actions as well as the level of forseeability of harm are taken into account. In Bolton v. Stone H.L. [1951] the defendant was playing cricket and hit to ball out into the stands where it hit the plaintiff. The judge ruled that since the ball had only been hit that far about six times in 30 years there was very little likelihood of it happening, meaning the risk was very low, thus could not attribute negligence.

Source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Tort_Law/Negligence#Standard_of_care