What are four elements involved in a successful negligence suit?

Answer 1

1. Duty - The Defendant must have owed a duty to the Plaintiff.

There are generally two ways a duty can arise between the Defendant and the Plaintiff. First, ask "did the defendant's conduct create a risk of harm to the plaintiff?" If the answer is yes, then the defendant owed a duty to do his risk-creating conduct reasonably under the circumstances. If the defendant's risk-creating conduct did not create a risk (the answer to the question is no), then one needs to investigate into whether a special relationship exists between the parties. Examples of special relationships are hiker-hiker, teacher-student, doctor-patient, priest-churchgoer, etc. Special relationships can increase the amount of care owed by one party to the other, but generally will never decrease the amount of duty owed.

2. Breach of duty - the defendant failed to act reasonably under the circumstances

If the jury concludes that the defendant did not act as a reasonable person should under the circumstances (which is not necessarily how the individual jurors would have acted) then the defendant breached his duty. Remember, the negligence suit fails if the defendant did not owe a duty.

3. Cause - You asked for four elements but "cause" is broken down into two categories-cause-in-fact and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is usually easy to prove. Ask "if not for the defendant's existence in the world, would the plaintiff have been harmed?" If the answer is yes, then the defendant's conduct is a cause-in-fact of the plaintiff's harm. There are other tests used. Proximate cause is usually more difficult than the other elements. It deals with how closely the defendant's conduct relates to the plaintiff's injury. Perhaps the best means to illustrate proximate cause is by example. If A drops a lit cigarette outside, the wind carries the cigarette 500 feet onto the outhouse on a farm, the outhouse explodes due to the gasoline tank inside (just assume the farmers were crazy kept gasoline around their outhouse). The outhouse's debris breaks through the windshield of a moving car. The car causes an accident injuring the other driver. So, should A be held liable for causing the other driver's injury? Probably not. He is a cause-in-fact of the injury because if he never dropped the cigarette, the injury would not have occurred. However, its not very foreseeable that dropping a cigarette would cause such a sequence of events, so A would not be held liable because his actions were not the proximate cause of the other driver's injury.

4. Damages - the plaintiff must have been injured by the defendant's negligence.