Elements
In order to prove negligence per se, the plaintiff must show that
- the defendant violated the statute,
- the statute provides for a criminal penalty (i.e., fines or imprisonment) but not by civil penalties,
- the act caused the kind of harm the statute was designed to prevent, and
- the plaintiff was a member of the statute's protected class.
In some jurisdictions, negligence per se creates merely a rebuttable presumption of negligence.
A typical example is one in which a contractor violates a building code when constructing a house. The house then collapses, injuring somebody. The violation of the building code establishes negligence per se and the contractor will be found liable, so long as the contractor's breach of the code was the cause (proximate cause and actual cause) of the injury.
Read more about this topic: Negligence Per Se
Famous quotes containing the word elements:
“But all subsists by elemental strife;
And Passions are the elements of Life.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)