What Are the Four Elements of Negligence?

So often people ask me, you know, how do I decide if the other person is at fault? And basically across all levels of cases, we use the definition of negligence, which is duty, breach, causation, and damages. Duty means it’s simple. We just show that the other person owes you a standard of care. So if you’re driving, they owe you a duty of reasonable care driving a car. you’re visiting somebody’s house. Breach means they breached that standard. So the standard, let’s call it the RPP, reasonable, prudent person. So it means the driver of the car. It means the homeowner, he breached that standard. So a homeowner has a defective condition on his stairs. Either he knew or should have known that there was a defective condition. And if he let the defective condition exist, he breached the standard of care. The next is we’d go to damages, which just means that you’re injured. And then the connection between breach and damages is causation. We have to show a link that his breach of the standard of care actually caused your injury. If we can show that, we’ve proven duty, breach, causation, and damages. And you win. After that, the question would just be how much, which is based on how serious your injuries are.