Breach of Duty: Definition & Meaning

The most simplistic duty of care definition describes the term as one party’s state of being legally responsible for reasonably providing for the safety and care of another party. A duty of care can legally be established through pre-existing law, a contractual agreement, or a court decision.

Learn more about this legal obligation to care for someone else’s safety, when it often comes into play, and how it impacts personal injury claims below.

What is the Duty of Care? Legal Definition

In a nutshell, the legal definition of having a duty of care toward someone is taking on the legal and financial responsibility for someone else’s safety and well-being. You’re likely wondering -- what is the duty of care threshold in day-to-day situations? The truth is that it depends on the specific context of the situation.

Many individuals have an automatic duty of care towards other parties as a result of pre-existing federal, state, local, or administrative law. For instance, all employers have a duty of care towards their employees. They’re obligated to follow specific safety standards and take reasonable steps to ensure their employees know and understand the risks of their job duties. All motorists have a legal duty of care towards everyone else on public roadways. Doctors have a duty of care towards their patients, and property owners owe a duty of care towards guests they invite onto their premises.

Breach of Duty Meaning

Problems arise when this duty of care is breached and an accident occurs. The most basic breach of duty definition describes the act as failing to uphold one’s duty of care towards someone else.

While many people have a duty to care for someone else’s safety, that doesn’t mean the other party is completely absolved of any responsibility for their own actions or that the party in question should be held to impossible-to-reach standards. Typically, courts use a reasonable person standard, meaning that a breach of duty of care can only exist when the person acted in a way that differed from the way another reasonable person with similar experience and training would act in the same situation.

In other words, if it’s determined that the person with a duty of care acted as reasonably as they could and an injury still happened, courts may rule that a breach of the duty of care did not occur. In this type of scenario, the injured party would still be liable for their own damages.

Breach of Duty Examples

Understanding the basic breach of duty meaning and applying it to real world situations are two very different things. A breach of one’s duty of care can happen in a wide range of situations, but it can be difficult to determine whether someone’s actions would be considered a breach of their legal obligations or not. To give you a better idea of how a breach of duty would play out in a real-life situation, we’ll go over a few examples of ordinary and professional negligence:

• A company creates a defective and unsafe product that harms a customer who uses it in the way it is intended to be used

• A doctor orders a medication that the patient is knowingly allergic to because the doctor failed to properly read the patient’s file and the patient suffers a medication injury

• A person trips and falls over a broken stairway after being invited to a person’s home and they were not warned about the unsafe condition

• A trucking company hires a driver with a poor driving history to transport goods and the trucker gets into a crash

One extremely common breach of duty example happens when a driver opts to get behind the wheel of a vehicle while intoxicated. This type of decision is a clear violation of the person’s obligation to care for the safety of other individuals on the road. That self-interested decision would be considered negligence under the law, meaning the drunk driver would hold all the liability in the event of an accident.

Consult with a Legal Expert on Your Breach of Duty Case

After you suffer harm and damages as a result of someone else’s behavior, you expect your pursuit of justice to be straightforward. That’s rarely the case, though, as various statutes and regulations exist that dictate how negligence cases proceed. For one, the burden of proof rests on the injured party’s shoulders. It will be up to you to prove the other party had a duty of care towards you, failed to uphold that duty of care, and caused your accident. From there, you’ll have to navigate any defenses to breach of duty arguments presented by the other party.

Typically, your best option is to get the help of a legal expert.

Glossary References

https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/glossary/duty-of-care

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/duty_of_care

https://www.thompsons.law/support/legal-guides/what-is-duty-of-care