When a person is injured in a car accident on a Mississippi road or a worker suffers an accident, fault is sometimes attributed to a breach of duty of care. Duty of care is something that many people exercise in some form in public. When you drive on a road, you are exercising a proper duty of care by obeying the traffic laws. However, a person who does not exert proper care in work, driving or other activities could cause an injury and even death.
If a person gets hurt and a breach of duty of care is the cause, a number of factors should be established. According to FindLaw, one of these factors is that the party who caused the injury through negligence owed a duty of care to others. If the liable party is a professional, it may be shown that the individual owed specific duties described by law, regulation or statute.
Once a duty has been established, it should also be shown that the responsible party breached that duty. Even so, these factors alone do not establish negligence. It must also be demonstrated that the actions of the liable party were responsible for the harm inflicted on the injured party. The harm must also be foreseeable, and damages should result from the actions of the negligent party.
How a breach of duty of care occurs varies by situation, but in general, a person who breaches a duty does not exercise reasonable care. A driver on a road, for example, might drive recklessly, like drive higher than the speed limit or run a red light, actions which could result in a car wreck and injury to another person. Similarly, a person performing a potentially dangerous task should take proper safety measures to prevent injury to other persons known to be on the job site.
However, duty of care does have its limits. Under the doctrine of proximate cause, a person is not held responsible for negligence if someone was injured in a way that was not foreseeable. If a person suffers injury in a manner too indirectly related to the actions of another party, it is not likely the other party will be held responsible.
