So you’ve been injured in Massachusetts and we need to prove the defendant is at fault for your injuries. So the standard is negligence. What does negligence mean? It means that we have to prove duty, breach, causation, and damages.
Duty is the reasonable prudent person standard. It’s what we call the RPP standard. It means the person who’s at fault, right? That defendant, someone in their shoes acting as the reasonable person. Did they really act reasonably? So driving is easy. Did they follow the rules of the road? Were they acting as a reasonable driver? If they were a commercial truck driver, then it’s a different standard, right? So were they acting as a reasonable, prudent commercial truck driver? If it’s a shopkeeper, were they acting as a reasonable, prudent commercial owner of a store in preventing you from becoming injured and taking care of their premises?
So then we go from duty to breach. Breach is simple. Did they violate that standard of care? Did they violate the reasonable prudent person standard? They breached their standard of care and were not acting reasonably.
We skip causation and go to damages. So, we then have to prove that you’re injured. So if you have injuries, then we have to prove that those injuries are causally connected to the breach.
So, the breach that they committed when they violated the reasonable standard is the causation of your injuries.
We prove those four things. That means you basically win your case. You’ve proven negligence. The value of your case is a whole different video, right? That comes in from then proving what is the amount of damages, what type of damages you have. But as far as just winning your case, getting over that first hurdle, that’s simply proving that the defendant is negligent.
