What is Negligence?
Negligence is the failure to use a reasonable degree of care given the circumstances. The four elements of negligence are a duty owed to a plaintiff, a breach of that duty by the defendant, proximate cause, and injury or damage suffered by the plaintiff. It is essentially carelessness.
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, negligence is defined as “the failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonably prudent person would have exercised in a similar situation.” As such, negligence refers to a failure to exercise the level of care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in similar circumstances. It forms the basis of many personal injury claims and lawsuits, where a plaintiff alleges that their injuries or damages were caused by the negligent actions or omissions of another party.
Key elements of negligence include:
- Duty of care: The legal obligation of an individual or entity to exercise reasonable care to avoid causing harm to others. This duty may arise from professional relationships, ownership of property, or other circumstances.
- Breach of duty: A failure to fulfill the duty of care by acting or failing to act in a way that deviates from what a reasonably prudent person would do.
- Causation: The link between the defendant’s breach of duty and the plaintiff’s injuries or damages. It must be shown that the defendant’s actions or omissions directly caused harm to the plaintiff.
- Damages: Actual harm or losses suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the defendant’s negligent conduct, which may include physical injuries, emotional distress, property damage, or financial losses.
Legal principles related to negligence aim to compensate injured parties for their losses and encourage individuals and businesses to act responsibly to prevent foreseeable harm. For example, if your landlord doesn’t fix a rickety set of steps you let him to, and you fall through the steps a week later, the landlord is negligent in his duty of care. Understanding the elements of negligence is essential in personal injury cases and other legal disputes where liability is based on the failure to exercise reasonable care under specific circumstance
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In the fall, bikers at risk for motorcycle accidents
Motorcycle accidents can be traumatic and tragic events. Due to their lack of bodily protection, motorcycle riders are much more vulnerable than other motorists to suffer more severe injuries and deaths when accidents occur. This time of year, as drivers are viewing the beauty of the fall colors around them, they may not be paying as much attention as they should to the road.
Motorcycle fatalities rose for the third consecutive year in 2012, with 4,957 riders killed according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 2012, the most recent completed report, also shows that 93,000 motorcyclists were injured in crashes.
It has been reported that collisions with another vehicle account for about half of all motorcycle accidents. Information provided by the Insurance Information Institute stated that motorcyclists were about 26 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a crash per vehicle mile traveled and five times more likely to be injured. […]
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Personal injury lawyer recommends steps to take if you are the victim of medical malpractice
Attorneys at Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys represented an estate and a widow in a medial malpractice case against a hospital in the death of her husband. The suit claimed that the hospital’s nurse did not follow hospital policies nor the surgeon’s orders when she administered a medication when it was not indicated, causing the death of the patient. Last week, a jury awarded the patient’s estate $1.5 million in the medical malpractice case.
According to an article in Pro Publica, a study in a current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety reports that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death. That would make medical errors the third leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease and cancer. […]
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Medical Malpractice Frequently Asked Questions
Medical Malpractice Questions and Answers
What is medical malpractice?
Legal definitions vary slightly from state to state, but as a general rule medical malpractice (also known as medical negligence) means that a health care provider caused injury or death to a patient by failing to act within the applicable standard of care. Essentially, a physician or other health care provider commits medical malpractice and is negligent when he or she fails to act in a reasonable way under the circumstances and the unreasonable conduct causes harm.
How can I find out if I have a case?
Because medical malpractice law is very complex, the best way to know is by talking to an experienced medical malpractice lawyer. Be sure to tell the lawyer exactly what happened to you, from the first time you visited your doctor through your last contact. […]
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Client Victories
Top Settlements & Verdicts
We have listed below a sampling of our top settlements and verdicts. We are not able to list all of our seven and eight figure victories here because of confidentiality restrictions. We chose the following list of publicly disclosed settlements and verdicts as they are representative of the types of injury and accident cases that we handle and illustrate how hard we fight for our clients. Keep in mind that we accept all kinds of cases, large and small. Our mission is to help injured victims — so call us today for a FREE case evaluation.
Take a deeper looker at our results.
$26 Million truck accident settlement.
$32.25 Million Settlement for a tragic airplane crash.
$20 Million Commercial vehicle settlement.
$17.5 Million Jury verdict in teens’ death caused by car accident. […]
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Dan Munley, Scranton Injury Lawyer, Explains Why The Roads Can Be Dangerous the Day After Bad Weather
During the winter months in Pennsylvania everyone knows that bad weather can create hazardous road conditions, which lead to car accidents.
But snow and ice can even create dangerous conditions for motorists long after the snow has been cleared from the roads. After the streets have been plowed and the walkways shoveled, ice and snow may still be present on the rooftops of vehicles. This build-up of snow and ice may dislodge while the car is being driven, and cause serious injury to others. This danger is increased when the vehicle is a tractor trailer that can hurl ice from its roof at dangerously high speeds while driving on the highway.
As a personal injury lawyer at Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys of Scranton, Pennsylvania, I have handled cases where tractor trailer drivers and other motorists forget to remove snow and ice from their vehicles before taking to the road, […]
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