Negligence

Negligence is the failure to behave with the level of care that a reasonable person would use under the same circumstances. Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute describes negligence as a foundational concept of tort law, and notes that failing to act counts as negligence only when the person had a duty to act. A company can be negligent through careless actions, such as shipping a product with a known defect, or through omissions, such as failing to fix a security hole.

To win a negligence claim, a plaintiff generally must prove four things: the defendant owed them a duty of care, the defendant breached that duty, the breach caused the harm, and the plaintiff suffered real damages. Courts look at how foreseeable the harm was, how serious it could be, and how burdensome it would have been to prevent it. Many states reduce or bar recovery if the injured person was also partly at fault.

Negligence appears in almost every category of case on this site. Data breach class actions commonly allege the company negligently failed to protect personal information. Product injury suits pair negligence with strict liability and failure to warn. Nursing home, trucking, and ride-share assault cases often allege negligent hiring, supervision, or security. The hardest element in class actions is usually damages, because each person must show a real, legally recognized harm, which is one reason breach settlements often pay more to people with documented losses.

See our data breach lawsuit page, how to sue a company, and the related strict liability and statute of limitations entries.