George explains what negligence is in a personal injury case.
George: [00:00:13] “Negligence” is a legal term, but it can be broken down into four different elements, and those elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages. So let’s take each one of them individually. Duty. In a negligence case, someone, typically the defendant, owes the injured party some duty of reasonable care. The second element is breach. Did the person, the defendant, breach that duty of care. If a person breaches that duty of care — third element — did they cause the fourth element, damages. So duty, breach, causation, damages make up the negligence claim. And for any negligence claim, a personal injury lawyer has to prove each one of those. So if someone strikes somebody who’s walking in a crosswalk and they’re hit by a car and they’re not injured, they may call and say, We want to bring a claim against the person who hit me. They were negligent. They hit me. The question is, Did they cause you injury? Did they cause you damages? If the answer is no, then you haven’t satisfied all four elements of the negligence standard. So it’s not just somebody did something wrong to you. It’s very important to also prove that they caused you harm as well. Thanks for watching. Hopefully this video is helpful. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to give us a call at 844-RECOVER.
