Essay On Contributory Negligence

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Negligence is conduct that creates risk of harm to someone, it may cause another person injury. To succeed in a negligence claim, the plaintiff must prove negligence the defendant owed as a duty toward the plaintiff. The plaintiff must show how the defendant failed to act in a reasonable way, or breached their duty and how the defendant's breach is the cause of someone’s injuries (n.d., 2016). Contributory negligence is conduct that creates risk to yourself. An individual has a duty to act as a rational person. If a person does not act rational and injury occurs, that person can be held responsible for damages or injuries caused by their actions or inactions, even though someone else was involved in the accident. For example, a motorist, hits a pedestrian who was crossing the street without following the warning of the do-not-cross sign of the streetlight (n.d., 2016). The Jaywalker files a negligence claim, the defendant can declare a contributory negligence claim against the plaintiff, stating the injury occurred was partially a result of the plaintiff's own actions. If the defendant can prove the contributory negligence claim, the plaintiff can be barred from recovering damages or their damages can be reduced to expose their role …show more content…

Under the traditional view, if a person had contributed to the accident in any way, the person was not entitled to compensation for his or her injuries. In an attempt to reduce the harsh, oftentimes unfair outcomes resulting from this approach, most states have now adopted a comparative negligence approach. The two comparative negligence methods are Pure Comparative Negligence, where the plaintiff's damages are totaled and reduced to reflect their impact to the injury. And there is the Modified Comparative Negligence, where the plaintiff will not recover anything, if they are found to be responsible for the causing injury (n.d.,

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