In the modern law of tort, the word negligence has two meanings. Firstly, it indicates the state of mind of a party in doing act and secondly, it means a conduct which the law deems wrongful. Originally the word was generally used in its subjective sense as a particular mode of doing another wrongful act. In this sense negligence means inadvertence or carelessness. It means blameworthy inadvertence in the consequences of conduct insofar as a reasonable man would have adverted to them. Negligence in the sense of conduct refers to the behavior of a person who, although innocent of any intention to bring about the result in question, has failed nevertheless to act up to the standards set by law, which is usually that of a reasonable man. When a statue, prescribes a certain standard of behavior with a view to avoiding injury to persons, it has been said that the failure to come up to that standard is statutorily equivalent to negligence, without proof of carelessness. Through civil litigation, if an injured person proves that another person acted negligently to cause his injury, he can recover damages to compensate for his harm. Proving a case for negligence can potentially entitle the injured plaintiff to compensation for harm to their body, property, mental well-being, financial status, or intimate relationships. However, because negligence cases are very fact-specific, this general definition does not fully explain the concept of when the law will require one person to compensate another for losses caused by accidental injury. Further, the law of negligence at common law is only one aspect of the law of liability. Although resulting damages must be proven in order to recover compensation in a negligence action, the nature and extent of those damages are not the primary focus of negligence cases. Negligence can be conceived of as having just three elements - conduct, causation and damages. More often, it is said to have four (duty, breach, causation and pecuniary damages) or five (duty, breach, actual cause, proximate cause, and damages). Each would be correct, depending on how much specificity someone is seeking. Thus its ingredients are:-
- Duty of care to the plaintiff:-
It means a legal duty rather than a mere moral, religious or social duty. The plaintiff has to establish that the defendant owed to him a specific legal duty to take care, of which he has made a breach. There is no general rule of defining such duty. It depends on each case whether a duty exists. This is the first principle of negligence.
- Breach of duty:-
The defendant must not only owe the claimant a duty of care, he must be in breach of it. Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would not do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do. Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs would do or doing something which a prudent and responsible man would not do. The law requires the caution which a prudent man would observe. The standard is objective and it means what a judge considers should have been the standard of a reasonable man. The law requires taking of two points into consideration to determine the standard of care required:-
- The importance of the object to be attained
- The magnitude of the risk
- The amount of consideration for which services, etc. are offered.
Damage:- To claim compensation a person must suffer harm. Recovery of compensation depends upon the type of harm suffered. These harms may fall in following cases:-
- Physical harm, i.e. harm to body;
- Harm to reputation.
- Harm to property, i.e. land and buildings and interests pertaining thereto, and his goods;
- Economic loss; and
- Mental harm or nervous shock.
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