Negligent Tort

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Introduction

Negligent torts are the most important torts in contemporary law. Negligent torts do not only concern deliberate actions. Instead, they also occur when entities or people fail to act in a reasonable way to individuals they owe a duty to. The action of negligence found in such tort leads to monetary damages or personal injury. This concept of negligence is based on the principle that all persons have to exercise a certain degree of duty care in order to avoid harming others. Everyone has a responsibility of not only caring about the result of their willful actions, but also mind about injuries they occasion to other people by their desire for normal skill or care when managing their properties or other people. Negligence by itself is not a wrong act; what makes it to be legally wrong is the character that defines that act. This study will mainly focus on analysis of the concepts of negligent torts, duty of care, proximate causation, and the different types of available remedies for finding of negligent tort liability.

The concept of negligent tort is a major section of law in the legal system of United States of America. Some laws consider it a breach of a contract in which the legislation gives a remedy in monetary damages.  Additionally, when the law imposes a specific duty on a given individual, and enforces a duty of care to which every similarly situated people have to adhere to, and those people happen to breach that imposed duty, those people become liable when that breach causes injury. In the same manner, a negligent tort represents immoral that is caused by the failure of an actor in adhering to the duty of care that the law requires it to comply with under specific circumstances.  The duty of care that is imposed by law differs based on the relationship and the actions between the victim of the tort and the actor (Egteren & Smith, 2002).

Whereas various negligent torts have different elements based on the different jurisdiction, four essential elements must be proved to confirm the occurrence of a negligent tort: duty, resulting damages, breach, and causation.  In essence, a negligent tort is constituted when an individual owes a service or duty to a victim; the person that owes the specified duty has to violate the obligation or promise; that violation must cause an injury; and the causes of the injury should have been rationally foreseen because of the neglectful actions of that person. 

According to Siliciano (1929), the terms of duty of care imposes certain duties and rights on contracting parties. The duty of care in negligence torts can be imposed explicitly or expressly. It defines the obligation of one individual to another. The duty of care binds humans to one another in the community and provides the front door in recovering incurred loss as a result of negligent torts: all claims of negligence have to go through the “duty portal” connecting the scope of recovery of negligent torts with harms from accidents.

Proximate causation exists in negligent torts when the plaintiff suffers injury because of natural conducts of negligence. The only form of remedy available for finding of tort liability is to ensure the plaintiff establishes both the proximate cause and negligence. It is usually not required for liability that the negligence of the defendant to be the last proximate cause of a particular injury. Various types of remedies are available for finding of tort liability: when the plaintiff’s injury has numerous proximate causes, when causes of the injury occur at the same time, or when the causes of the injury of the plaintiff occur in combination (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers & Langvardt, 2010).

In conclusion, negligent torts are product of people failing to do what is expected of them thus resulting in loss or injury, or doing what they are supposed to do in a worn way that causes loss or injury. Elements such as duty of care, and proximate causation are necessary to determine a negligence tort. In settling disputes arising from this tort, several remedies such as compensation are necessary.

References

Egteren, V.H., Smith, R.T. (2002). “Environmental regulations under simple negligence or strict liability.” Environmental and Resource Economics, 21(4), 367-396.

Mallor, J.P., Barnes, A.J., Bowers, T., & Langvardt, A.W. (2010). Business Law: The ethical, global,and ecommerce environment (14th ed.). New York : Irwin/McGraw Hill. ISBN: 978-0-07-337764-3.

Michael, R & Koenig, T. (2005). “Tort of Negligent Enablement of Cybercrime.” Environmental and Research Journal, 15(3), 45-67.

Siliciano, J. A. (1929). “Negligent Accounting and the Limits of Instrumental Tort Reform.” Hein Journal, 30(4), 56-61.