Skip to main content
Personal Injury

What is Negligence?

The failure to exercise the level of care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in similar circumstances, resulting in harm to another person or their property.

Understanding Negligence

To prove negligence, a plaintiff must establish four elements: duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages. Negligence is the foundation of most personal injury lawsuits.

Examples

  • 1A driver texting while driving who causes an accident
  • 2A property owner who fails to fix a known hazard
  • 3A doctor who fails to follow standard medical procedures

Why This Matters in Legal Cases

Negligence is the legal theory underlying most personal injury cases. Your client's ability to recover compensation depends on proving all four elements. Even if the defendant was clearly at fault, the case fails if you can't establish that the defendant owed your client a duty, breached that duty, directly caused the harm, and that quantifiable damages resulted.

Explaining to Clients

Explain negligence to clients as "proving the other person wasn't careful enough." Walk through each element: they had a responsibility to be careful (duty), they failed to be careful (breach), their carelessness caused your injury (causation), and you were actually harmed (damages). All four pieces must be proven.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between negligence and recklessness?

Negligence is careless behavior—failing to act as a reasonable person would. Recklessness involves knowing a risk exists and ignoring it anyway. Reckless conduct is more serious and can result in punitive damages.

Can I still recover if I was partially at fault?

In most states, yes. Under comparative negligence rules, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. In some states (pure comparative negligence), you can recover even if you were 99% at fault. Other states bar recovery if you were more than 50% at fault.

How do you prove negligence?

Evidence includes accident reports, witness statements, photos/videos, medical records, and expert testimony. For car accidents, police reports often document who was at fault. For medical malpractice, expert witnesses explain what the standard of care was and how the defendant deviated from it.

Sources

Related Terms

Damages

Monetary compensation awarded to a person injured through the wrongful conduct of another party. Damages are intended to restore the injured party to the position they were in before the injury occurred.

Personal Injury

A legal term for an injury to the body, mind, or emotions, as opposed to damage to property. Personal injury claims are typically brought in civil court to recover compensation for harm caused by another party's negligence or intentional misconduct.

Last updated: January 24, 2026
Reviewed by: Quilia Legal Content Team

Help Your Clients Understand Their Case

Quilia makes it easy to communicate complex legal concepts to your clients.

Request a DemoBrowse All Terms