| A | B |
|---|
| Negligence | The failure to exercise a reasonable amount of care in either doing or not doing something, resulting in harm or injury to another person. |
| Elements | The conditions that make an act unlawful |
| Duty | A legal obligation. |
| Breaches | The violation of a law, duty, or other form of obligation, including obligations formed through contracts or warranties either by engaging in an action or failing to act |
| Causation | The reason an event occurs; that which produces an effect. One of the four elements that must be proven in a negligence case, causation is subdivided into cause in fact and proximate cause. |
| Cause in fact | One of the elements a plaintiff must prove in order to establish causation in a negligence suit. It means that if the harm would not have occurred without the wrongful act, the act is the cause in fact. |
| Proximate cause | In negligence law, this concept limits the damages the defendant must pay to only those harms that are reasonably predictable consequences of the defendant's wrongful acts. |
| Foreseeable harm | Injury a person could reasonably predict. For instance, a person who leaves a banana peel on the floor could reasonably predict that someone might slip on the peel, fall, and break a bone. If this happens, the broken bone is a foreseeable harm. |
| Damages | The injuries or losses suffered by one person due to the fault of another; [2] money asked for or paid by court order to a plaintiff for injuries or losses suffered. |
| Contributory Negligence | A legal defense in which it is determined that the plaintiff and defendant share the fault for a negligence tort. If proven, the plaintiff cannot recover damages. |
| Comparative Negligence | In a tort suit, a finding that the plaintiff was partly at fault and, therefore, does not deserve full compensation for his or her injuries. For example, if an accident was forty percent of the plaintiff's fault, the plaintiff's damages are reduced by forty percent. |
| Counterclaim | A claim made by a defendant against the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit. |
| Assumption of Risk | A legal defense to e negligence tort, whereby the plaintiff is considered to have voluntarily accepted a known risk of danger. |
