Section 1: What is Negligence

Lesson 3: The Standard of Care

Megan's mother decides to build a skating rink in the backyard for her daughter and her friends. Intrigued by the way she'd seen the water from the hose freeze into a sheet of ice, Meagan does a bit of experimenting herself the next day when her mother is not around; in the process, she turns the sidewalk in front of her neighbour's house into a second skating rink. When Mr. O'Brien comes home that evening, he slips, falls, and breaks his leg.

Megan is a child. The question arises, do the courts expect that children owe the same duty of care to others that's expected of adults? If Meagan were eighteen years old rather than six, would the courts treat her differently? The answer is yes. The courts do expect children to be responsible for their actions, but not to the same extent as adults; and older children will, of course, be expected to behave more responsibly than younger ones.

All this raises the broader question as to just what  standard of care  the courts believe people owe each other in general. You have learned that a duty of care is owed, but to what degree? Adults are held to a higher standard than children, but how is that standard determined in each instance?

Foreseeability and the Reasonable Person

Put simply, the courts use two closely related yardsticks to determine the standard of care people owe each other. They are

• the concept of the reasonable person

• the notion of foreseeability
  

Check your knowledge by completing Something to Think About 6 on the next page.