Understanding Negligence: A Breakdown of its Essential Elements

In personal injury, proving negligence is a key factor in the final decision of these cases. Negligence being a factor in your injury is what tort law, which personal injury falls under, is all about. Given its significance, understanding the nuanced elements that constitute negligence is essential. 

What is Negligence?

As mentioned above, negligence is a founding aspect of tort law. It characterizes the failure to exercise “due care,” the level of care that a reasonable person would have used under the same circumstances, encompassing both actions and inactions. 

However, because human action can be nuanced for a person to be found negligent, there are 4 legal elements that are considered. 

4 Elements of Negligence

1. Duty

In this element, we consider the defendant’s obligation from one person to another, and if their behavior is proper or improper.

2. Breach

When it can be shown that the defendant acted improperly, such as avoiding repairing something that caused an injury or doing some careless action without considering the safety of self and others. 

3. Causation

Next is the establishment of the cause-and-effect relationship between negligence and the resulting harm. In this element, there are two things to consider: direct cause and proximate cause. Direct cause considers if the plaintiff’s harm would have occurred if not for the defendant’s negligence, and proximate cause is more case-specific and addresses whether, in logic, policy, and fairness, the defendant should be held accountable for the plaintiff’s harm.

4. Harm

Finally, we determine the damage a plaintiff suffered as a result of a defendant’s actions or inaction. This is considered in the sense of physical harm, such as injury, death, or property damage.

Defining the Degree

These elements are used as guidelines to establish negligence in a personal injury case. Once negligent behavior is established, different states use different systems to determine the extent of each party’s contribution and, as a result, the amount of compensation they should receive. Some examples of these systems include Contributory Negligence and Comparative Negligence. 

• Contributory negligence is a system that prevents injured victims from recovering any compensation if they contributed even slightly to the cause of an accident.

• Comparative negligence is a system in which the courts determine if the plaintiff partially contributed to the accident and may assign a percentage of fault to both the injured victim and the defendant. Their compensation will be reduced by the amount they contributed to the event. In this system, the person assigned most of the fault for the incident can still claim damages.

Negligence in South Carolina

In South Carolina, the courts used contributory negligence until 1988, when they switched to a form of comparative negligence system. Under this more lenient doctrine, plaintiffs receive compensation for negligence even if they were partially at fault, but with two conditions:

1. Their compensation will be reduced proportionately to the degree they contributed to the cause of the accident, i.e. if the injured party is determined to be 20% responsible for the incident that caused their harm, they can only recover 80% of the damages.
2. If they contribute more than 50%, they recover nothing.

If you have experienced an injury or death of a loved one due to another’s negligence, you may be entitled to compensation. The statute of limitations for personal injury cases in South Carolina gives you three years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit, so you should reach out to an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible. Do not hesitate to contact our experienced team at Morris Law Today!