Negligent Tort

Negligent Tort

Joelle Yeager

BUS 670: Legal Environment

Professor Toni Starcher

January 23, 2012

A tort is a civil wrongdoing in which a person’s behavior has caused another individual to suffer in some way. A tort does not always describe an illegal act but describes a situation in which a person is harmed by another individual. Tort law is classified in two categories that help the courts decide which sanctions to impose: (1) intentional torts and (2) negligent torts (Hernandez, 2010). Intentional torts are committed by an individual that intends to cause harm to another individual, where as negligent torts are committed by an individual that carelessly failed to abide by a safety standard imposed by law (Hernandez, 2010). An example of a negligent tort would be if a business owner fails to fix a broken step at the entrance of his establishment and a customer falls and breaks their ankle on the step. The business owner did not intend for the customer to fall and break their ankle, however, the owner failed to abide by reasonable safety requirements and may be liable for damages in a court of law.

There are three basic elements of a negligent tort that must be proven in order for an individual to prove that a person has committed a negligent tort. The elements of a negligent tort claim are (1) that the defendant owed a duty of care; (2) that the defendant breached this duty; and (3) that the breach of duty caused the injury to occur (Mallor, Barnes, Bower, & Langvardt, 2010). In other words, in order for the plaintiff to effectively show that the defendant committed a negligent tort, they must prove that the defendant failed to abide by necessary and reasonable regulations that led to an injury sustained by the plaintiff.

The first step in the determination of negligence law is to decide whether the individual owed the plaintiff a duty of care. The court of law acts under the assumption that people should act with...