Res Ipsa

The four elements central to any negligence case are duty, breach, causation, and damage. There are, however, two special negligence law doctrines that assist in proving the first two elements. These are res ipsilocuator, which allows negligent behavior which constitutes the duty and breach elements to be proven based on the surrounding circ Res ipsilocuator, Latin for the thing speaks for itself, is a legal theory wherein the facts and circ In an ordinary negligence case, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty and that However, under res ipsilocuator, the defendant's negligence may be pres The elements of res ipsilocuator are, 1. The defendant was in exclusive control of the situation or instr 2. The injury would not have ordinarily occurred but for the defendant's negligence and 3. The plaintiff's injury was not due to If these elements are met, the burden s Res ipsilocuator typically arises in cases where the negligent act is so obvious that there is no need for evidence of what happened. What must have happened is apparent from the surrounding circ The finder of fact must be able to infer through common knowledge and experience that negligence occurred. For example, in a famous English case, Beren V. Bodle, a man was walking on a sidewalk outside of a flower warehouse when a barrel of flower fell from a warehouse window. The man did not see the flower fall out of the window nor could he produce any evidence to indicate how or why the barrel fell from the window of the warehouse. Still, the court thought it apparent that the flower almost certainly came from a flower manufacturer. Moreover, barrels of flower don't ordinarily fall from warehouse windows in the absence of negligent conduct of the people running the warehouse. The warehouse workers had exclusive control of the barrel that fell out of the window and the plaintiff's actions did not contribute to Res ipsilocuator is also sometimes applied in medical malpractice cases where somet A foreign object might have ended up in a patient or a suitoring may have been proven to be ineffective. W T Negligence per se is applied when conduct that is a violation of a law causes harm. Because violating the law is inherently considered negligent behavior, that the defendant violated the law inherently proves that he breached So to prove negligence per se, the plaintiff must establish, one, that there is a statute that defines a certain standard of conduct, two, the defendant violated that statute, three, the plaintiff is a member of the class of the statute that was designed to protect, and four, the plaintiff suffered the sort of injury that the statute was designed to prevent. Negligence per se is often of use in automobile accident cases. If it can be shown that a driver violated a traffic law in a manner that led to the accident, negligence will be pres So for example, if a driver drives 35 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour zone, she is pres Still, where it can be clearly shown that violating the law was safer under the circ For example, where state law required that pedestrians walk on sidewalks, but where the sidewalks were ice covered and therefore unsafe, walking on the street instead was not considered to be negligence per se even though it was technically a violation of the rule. Moreover, to recover under a theory of negligence per se, the plaintiff must also prove that she was wit For example, Minnesota's legislature enacted a law requiring railroad companies to maintain fences at road and street crossings. An intoxicated man sleeping on the tracks crossing was severely injured when Although the failure to erect a fence at the crossing constituted a violation of Minnesota law, the court concluded that the purpose of the railroad fence law was to keep livestock, domestic animals, and small c The man who should have known better than to sleep on a rail bed without the presence of a fence was not in the class of persons intended to be protected by therefore negligence per se could not be used to satisfy the duty and breach elements of t Additionally, the plaintiff must show that the violated rule was designed to prevent the type of injury that the plaintiff suffered. In one case, sheep being transported by s The sheep's owner sued the owner of the s Had the pens be installed, he argued, the sheep would have been safe. However, the court observed that the statute's purpose was to prevent infection aboard the s Because the injury that the plaintiff suffered was not the injury that the statute was designed to prevent, negligence per se could not be invoked. Res ipsa locator and negligence per se are both doctrines that assist in proving breach of duty in certain negligence cases. The former allows negligence to be inferred from the circ Both have many applications that allow causes of action to go forward where there is a lack of direct evidence to prove negligence.