Standard of Care

What Is The Standard Of Care In A Negligence Case?

The general standard is ordinary care. North Carolina’s pattern jury instructions define it as that degree of care which a reasonable and prudent person would use under the same or similar circumstances to protect himself and others from injury, and they add that a person’s failure to use ordinary care is negligence. The reasonable person is an objective figure. It does not matter that the defendant meant well, was doing their personal best, or had never caused an accident before.

“Under the same or similar circumstances” is the part that makes the standard flexible. Reasonable care on a dry interstate at noon is different from reasonable care on a wet two-lane road at night. The standard stays the same; what it requires changes with the danger.

How Does The Standard Of Care Change With The Situation In North Carolina?

For some activities the law does more than leave the standard to the jury’s sense of what is reasonable. A safety statute can set it: violating a traffic law such as the speed statute, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-141, is negligence in itself when it causes the kind of harm the law was meant to prevent. A profession can set it: a health care provider is judged against the standards of practice among members of the same profession with similar training and experience in the same or similar communities.

The standard also depends on who was hurt and where. In Nelson v. Freeland, the North Carolina Supreme Court held that owners and occupiers of land owe reasonable care to all lawful visitors. Trespassers are different: under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 38B-2 a possessor of land generally owes a trespasser no duty of care, with exceptions in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 38B-3 that include certain dangers to trespassing children. And children are not held to an adult standard when their own conduct is questioned.

How Is The Standard Of Care Proved In A North Carolina Case?

In an everyday case the jury supplies the standard from common experience. Jurors know what careful driving looks like, so the evidence is about what happened: speed, distance, lighting, phone records, where each vehicle ended up. Traffic statutes, company safety policies, and industry rules are offered to show what a careful person or business would have done.

When the conduct is beyond common knowledge, the standard has to be proved by expert testimony under N.C. R. Evid. 702. That is true in nearly all medical cases, where the rule limits standard-of-care testimony to licensed providers in the same or a similar field, and often true in trucking, engineering, and product cases. Emergency medical care carries a higher burden: the patient must prove a violation of the standard by clear and convincing evidence.

• Common experience: ordinary driving, walking, and property upkeep.
• Statutes and regulations: traffic laws, building codes, federal trucking rules.
• Policies and industry practice: a company’s own manuals and what similar businesses do.
• Expert witnesses: required when the standard is technical or professional.

Why Does The Standard Of Care Apply To The Injured Person Too In North Carolina?

Because of contributory negligence. In North Carolina the defendant may argue that the injured person also failed to use ordinary care for their own safety, and that this failure helped cause the injury. If the defendant proves it, the injured person recovers nothing, even when the defendant’s breach was far worse. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-139 places the burden of proving contributory negligence on the defendant.

The same reasonable-person test is used. Would a careful person have seen the spill, slowed for the intersection, or stayed off the phone in the crosswalk? This is why insurers ask injured people detailed questions about what they were doing in the seconds before a crash or fall. The contributory negligence guide explains the defense and its exceptions.