Navigating the Lingo – Understanding Basic Concepts of Negligence, Causation and Damages

Many professionals use words and phrases that are not readily understood by the public at large. Doctors speak of comminuted fractures, anosognosia, and blood perfusion. Physicists speak of quantum leaps, quarks, and leptons, and carpenters speak of balustrades, purlins, and stringers. You may hear lawyers talk about negligence, causation, and damages.

So long as these professionals are speaking to each other, using such technical terms is an efficient way to communicate. The use of the technical word or phrase will impart a significant amount of information, if each has relatively equal training and experience. There is no need, for example, for one physicist to tell another that a particle has moved from one position to another without moving through the space between the two particles – they can just say a “quantum leap” occurred.

Things, however, start to change when a person with specific training and expertise is speaking with a person with no such training. The use of such technical terms will be, to the person without training or expertise, confusing at best and condescending at worst.

People come to professionals for help. If a lawyer tells you that your case has contributory negligence problems along with a causation issue – not to mention limits problems, with nothing further – that lawyer has not done their job in explaining the problems with the case.

I am a lawyer. If you tell me that there are limits problems, I will immediately understand the problem. However, if I am told that the purlins and stringers in my home are rotting, I would have no clue what that meant. (It turns out, according to the internet, that I likely need a new roof.)

Simple and clear language is required. We are going to discuss three legal concepts that are part of almost every lawsuit – negligence, causation, and damages – in simple and clear language. Sometimes, the best way to explain something is to give simple examples. I will do that below and use examples arising out of car crashes as this is an activity (driving or riding in a car) with which almost everyone is familiar.

Let’s start with the concept of negligence. In law school, a professor would have told us that negligence occurs when someone does something (or fails to do something) and falls below the relevant standard of care. The standard of care is what a reasonable person in similar circumstances would have done (or not done).

We need to break this down into two separate components. First, what did the person do? Second, what would a reasonable person have done in similar circumstances? For example, assume that a person is driving a car. The speed limit is 60KPH. The person is approaching a red light. They speed through the red light, striking your vehicle. You suffer a broken leg.

We know what the person did – they sped through a red light. We now compare that to what a reasonable person would do in similar circumstances. I am sure we can all agree that reasonable people do not speed through red lights. As a result, because reasonable people would not speed through red lights (not speeding through red lights is the standard of care), the conduct of a person that speeds through red lights falls below that standard of care and is therefore “negligent.”

While this is obviously a simple example, there is nothing more to it. Determine what the person in question did and compare that conduct to what reasonable people do in similar circumstances. If the conduct of the person in question is worse, then that conduct is negligent.

Let’s move on to “causation.” We know that the person in question sped through a red light and crashed into your car and was therefore negligent. After proving negligence, to succeed in a lawsuit, you must prove causation – which means nothing more than the negligent action (crashing into your car) caused damage.

It is important to understand what a lawyer means when we use the term “damage.” We are not, for example, speaking of the broken leg you suffered in the crash. We are speaking of the impact of the broken leg on your life. The broken leg is the “injury,” while the damages would depend on many factors such as the severity of the break, how the break healed, what your health was like before the crash, and what you did for a living.

For example, assume you are 40 years old and worked a factory job where you were on your feet all day. You were healthy before the crash. You were not educated. After the crash, because of the broken leg, you could no longer stand for more than one hour, and you could not be educated for a job where you could sit most of the day. The damage caused would be the inability to work for the rest of your life. The amount of the lost income would be your “damages” for this aspect of a lawsuit.

On those facts, it is likely that the negligent conduct (speeding through the red light) “caused” your damages (the inability to return to work for the rest of your life).

Let’s change the facts a little to see how causation interacts with damages. Let’s assume the same facts, other than this – you have the clear ability to re-train for a new job in which you could sit most of the time, and in fact, you would earn more money if you did so.

While the negligence still caused damages, it would not cause the same damages as in the first example. Now, your damages may be a few years of lost income while you retrain, and not a lifetime of lost earnings.

I have given you the simplest examples to illustrate what the terms mean. If the facts change and become more complicated, so does the analysis. For example, what if before suffering the broken leg, you had a completely separate medical condition that would have, within 3 years of the crash, prevented you from working on your feet? Does that change the damages? What if you were speeding at the time of the crash, and had you not been speeding, you would have seen and could have avoided the person speeding through the red light? Does that change things?

Such changes in the facts are endless – and do result in changes. However, the concepts of negligence, causation, and damages are the same. Negligence is conduct that other people would not engage in, in similar circumstances. Causation asks what damages were caused by the negligent conduct. Damages are the economic measure of the changes in your life caused by the negligent conduct.

If you were injured by conduct you think was negligent and you think caused damages, we can help. We will listen to what happened to you, review some details of your life, and explain negligence, causation, and damages to you in clear and simple-to-understand language.