| In the United States, when a plaintiff files an action on negligent tort, he must make the court believe that the defendant has violated the duty of care he should have taken to the plaintiff. Therefore, how to judge whether a defendant has violated his duty of care becomes the key issue to make sure whether he should take the responsibility of negligent tort.From the precedents and theories of the United States, the criterion to decide whether a defendant has violated his duty of care to the plaintiff, or that to decide negligence, is the "reasonable person standard". Actually, the reasonable person standard is an objective one, i.e. whether the behaviors of a defendant are negligent is judged by an outside standard and not by the subjective capability of the defendant himself.In the judicial practices of the United States, it is generally believed that a court adopts total risk-and-income standard when deciding the negligence of the parties in negligent tort cases. In fact, it is to judge the negligence of the parties by way of economic analysis. The factors needed are usually the possibility of causing harm, the degree of the harm, the cost for preventive measures and the social value of the actor's action.When the reasonable person standard is applied in specific cases, the concrete rules for application are various according to the different circumstances of the cases.As to persons with mental defects, the common rule adopted by the majority of the U.S. judicial areas is to preclude the specific mental status, i.e. to apply the reasonable person standard as if the party is a normal person. However, there are some exceptions. It is possible that one cannot obtain compensations for negligent tort when the harm is caused by a person with acute mental defects, or when it is caused by the ward to the guardian who has the responsibility to guardian the person with mental defects.As for persons with body defects, various rules will be applied in accordance with the causes of the body defects. For disabled persons such as the blind, the deaf and the dumb, the courts of the United States usually take the body defects into consideration when deciding whether there is negligent behavior, that is to say, if the defendant is blind, then the court will decide the behavior of the blind by the standard of the behaviors of a reasonable blind under the same circumstances. As long as the behaviors of the blind defendant are reasonable in the eyes of a reasonable blind, the defendant has no negligence. For a drunken man, the general rule is that he has the same duty of care with a sober person, i.e. if the behavior is negligent for a sober person, then it is also negligent for a drunken man. For persons with special skills that ordinary persons do not have, such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, auditors, drivers and others whose work needs qualification certificates, the general rule is to judge the negligence by the common care of a reasonable person with the qualification certificate of the certain profession. Yet the rules of this field are not unified in practice.For minors, it is needed to decide whether the minor has the ability of negligencebefore deciding whether he has negligence. The general rule to decide a minor's negligence is that there is not negligence as long as the minor has the care which other minors with similar age, intelligence and experiences should have under the same conditions. However, an adult standard may be applied when a minor is engaged in activities of adults, such as driving, i.e. to see whether he has the care of a reasonable adult when he does the activities.In cases involving abrupt emergencies, most of the judicial areas of the U.S. will not apply the common reasonable person standard but that under abrupt emergencies, i.e. as for a person under abrupt emergencies, if the emergency is not caused by his negligence completely or partially, then he will not take the responsibility for negligence as long as he acts according to his best judgments, or, if he does... |
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