The Tort Of Negligence Is A Failure Of One Party

Duty of Care: best interest; defensible decision making; contextualising behaviour; identification of positive and negative risks

Duty of care is a requirement to exercise reasonable care, attention and caution to avoid negligence which would lead to the harm of other people.

Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to

The issue in this case as it relates to the Kentucky tort of negligence is governed by rules or principles established by the courts. The elements of negligence are a duty the defendant owes to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty by the defendant, a causal connection between the breach and the plaintiff's injury, and actual injury. In the absence of any one of these elements, no cause of action for negligence will lie.

A duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeable harm others. A definition from Wikipedia

Negligence is the failure to do something. Many medical cases are filed as medical malpractice suits, “medical malpractice is professional misconduct. Malpractice differs from negligence because it is performed by a license medical professional” (Flight 2). The case of Horton V. Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center can be used as a primary example where negligence, “failure to take reasonable precautions to protect others from the risk of harm” (Flight 33), is visible.

The Tort of Negligence put the claimant in the position to prove that the defendant owed to them a duty of care, the defendant breached that duty and the claimant must have suffered damages as result of that breach (Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC562).

In certain situations, a duty of care is owed to another person. For example, a surgeon owes a duty of care to whoever they operate on. The existence of a duty of care is established by the Neighbour Test which was brought in by Lord Aitken after the Donoghue v Stevenson case;

| |Duty of care can be defined as "an obligation, recognised by law, to avoid conduct fraught with unreasonable risk of danger |

Duty of care contributes to the safe guarding or protection of individuals by having set rules regarding the treatment of the individual person which others are to follow. Any treatment outside of these standards is to be raised and investigated.

Establishing whether not the current case is analogous to cases in which a duty of care already been determine. For instance the category of which duty of care has been held not to exist. The law justifies all these through the word responsibility. Everyone has a responsibility for their actions. This same word, responsibility, is also used to justify strict and vicarious liability. Parents, guardians, employers and other similar persons are responsible for their wards and employees. I think this is also a balancing of the scale. Due to circumstances such as incapacity in law of inability to pay, the injured party may be

Presented are four separate cases that have been argued and settled in a court of law. Each of these cases represent a different kind of tort, a tort is a civil wrong or wrongful act, which can be either intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another (Hill & Hill n.d.). The torts are as listed, intentional, criminal, negligence, and liability as presented in the four researched cases.

The main idea of the law of negligence is to ensure that people exercise reasonable care when they act by measuring the potential harm that may foreseeably cause harm to other people. Negligence is the principal trigger for liability to ascend in matters that deal with the loss of property of personal injury. Therefore, a person cannot be liable for something unless they have been found negligent or have contributed to the loss of property or injury to the plaintiff (Stuhmcke, 2005). There is more to

“In the majority of cases that come before the courts, whether the defendant owes the plaintiff a duty of care can be determined from precedent created by earlier cases; for example manufacturers of goods owe a duty of care to consumers, motorist owe a duty of care to other road users, boat captains owe a duty of care to their passengers, teacher owe a duty of care to their students, occupier owe a duty of care to persons who come on to their property. . (Andy Gibson, Douglas Fraser, Business Law 5th edition, Pearson 2011 page No.165, 166 and 169).”

The scenario is a horrendous string of coincidences that resulted in a tragedy. However, every party carries some responsibility for the eventual double amputation. This paper examines each of the parties, their possible liability and how that is covered by negligence law.