What four requirements must be met to determine negligence?

To determine negligence, it is essential to establish four specific elements: a duty owed, a breach of that duty, proximate cause, and actual loss.

Firstly, the duty owed refers to the legal obligation one party has to act in a reasonable manner to avoid causing harm to another party. This is foundational in establishing whether negligence has occurred, as it sets the standard for expected behavior in a given situation.

Next, the breach of duty occurs when that individual fails to meet the established standard of care, thereby acting in a way that a reasonable person would not. This leads to the question of whether the actions taken (or not taken) were adequate compared to what was expected.

Proximate cause is concerned with whether there is a sufficiently close and direct link between the breach of duty and the damages suffered. For negligence to be established, the harm must be a foreseeable result of the breach of duty.

Lastly, actual loss means there must be verifiable damages suffered as a result of the breach of duty. Whether it's physical injury, property damage, or financial loss, tangible evidence of harm is necessary for a negligence claim to be successful.

In conjunction, these four components create a framework to assess negligence; without any of them, a claim of negligence