Generally, a person owes everyone else with whom he comes in contact a general “duty of care.” Normally, you don’t have to worry about this duty – it is the same in all instances, the duty to behave with the care that would be shown by a reasonable person.

A personal injury plaintiff must show that defendant’s conduct imposed an unreasonable risk of harm on him/her. It is not enough for a personal injury plaintiff to show that a defendant’s conduct resulted in a terrible injury. Rather, the personal injury plaintiff must show that defendants conduct, viewed as of the time it occurred, without benefit of hindsight, imposed an unreasonable risk of harm. When determining whether the risk of harm from D’s conduct was so great as to be “unreasonable,” courts use a balancing test:

“Where an act is one which a reasonable person would recognize as involving a risk of harm to another, the risk is unreasonable and the act is negligent if the risk is of such magnitude as to outweigh what the law regards as the utility of the act or of the particular manner in which it is done.” Thus, the reasonableness of Defendant’s conduct is viewed as an objective standard. The jury must determine, would a “reasonable person of ordinary prudence,” in Defendant’s position, have acted the same way? Defendant does not escape liability merely because she intended to behave carefully or thought she was behaving carefully. If Defendant has a physical disability, the standard for negligence is what a reasonable person with that physical disability would have done. The ordinary reasonable person is not deemed to have the particular mental characteristics of Defendant.

Once negligence has been proven the Plaintiff may recover damages. Damages, may include: