LAW OF TORTS

The concept of Prudent man The creation of law

PRUDENT MAN
The prudent man (historically reasonable man) is a legal fiction of the common law representing an objective standard against which any individual's conduct can be measured. It is used to determine, whether a breach of the standard of care has occurred, provided a duty of care can be proven.

Lord Macmillan remarked The standard of foresight of the reasonable man eliminates the personal equation and is independent of the idiosyncrasies of the particular person whose conduct is in question.

CREATION OF PRUDENT MAN

The first appearance of the reasonable person standard was

in the English case of Vaughan v. Menlove (1837). In this case, the defendant had stacked hay on his rental property in a manner prone to spontaneous ignition. After he had been repeatedly warned over the course of five weeks, the hay ignited and burned the petitioner's barns and stable, and then spread to the landlord's two cottages on the adjacent property. Menlove's attorney admitted his client's "misfortune of not possessing the highest order of intelligence," arguing that negligence should only be found if the jury decided Menlove had not acted with "bona fide [and] to the best of his [own] judgment." The court disagreed, reasoning that such a standard would be too subjective, instead preferring to set an objective standard by which to adjudicate cases.

HOW THE PRUDENT MAN RULE WORKS

The prudent man standard holds that each person

owes a duty to behave as a reasonable person would under the same or similar circumstances. While the specific circumstances of each case will require varying kinds of conduct and degrees of care, the reasonable person standard undergoes no variation itself. The standard does not exist independent, there are other circumstances within a case which could affect an individual's judgment.

The reasonable person will weigh all of the following factors before acting:
the foreseeable risk or harm his actions create versus

the utility of his actions. the extent of the risk so created. the likelihood such risk will actually cause harm to others. any alternatives of lesser risk, and the costs of those alternatives.

SCOPE OF PRUDENT MAN RULE

This standard performs a crucial role in

determining negligence in both criminal law, that is criminal negligence and tort law, that is tort negligence. The standard also has a presence in contract law, though its use there is substantially different.

NEGLIGENCE
Originally negligence means inadvertence or

carelessness. In modern law of torts, negligence has two meaning: Firstly it indicates the state of mind of a party in doing an act. Secondly it means a conduct which the laws deems wrongful. Now negligence has become an independent tort itself.

BREACH OF DUTY
The breach of duty to take care means not

taking due care. To know whether defendant has committed a breach of duty it is determined by applying to his conduct the standard of care of a reasonable man. The standard of care required is reasonable in circumstances of particular case.

BLYTH v BIRMINGHAM WATERWORKS Co. (1856)

FACTS : Defendant had laid a water main18 inches deep

and in the main was a fire plug. Water escaped from main and forced its way through the ground into claimants house. It seemed there was a severe frost and this may have caused the wooden plug to be dislodged by expansion of water. JUDGEMENT : It was held that Waterworks Co. were not negligent. They could only have been negligent if they had failed to do what a reasonable person would do in the circumstances.

GLASGOW Co. v MUIR (1943)

FACTS : In this case defendant was a company.

The manager of the corporation permitted a picnic party to have their food in the tea-room of the corporation. When two members of the picnic party were carrying tea to the tea room in a big urn through a passage where some children were buying sweets suddenly the tea urn fell from their hand on the ground and injured six children including the plaintiff. JUDGEMENT : It was held that the manager was not liable for injury caused to the plaintiff as she could not foresee that such an event would happen as a consequence of tea urn being carried through.

BALTON v STONE (1951)

FACTS : The plaintiff was standing on the road, where

she was struck by a cricket ball driven by the defendant. It was rare for ball to be hit out of the ground. Even though risk of such an accident was foreseeable the chance that it would actually occur were very small. JUDGEMENT : It was held that the defendant was not liable for damages. The risk of injury to any one in such a place was so remote that a prudent person could not have anticipated it.

CONCLUSION
It is a very important rule which is used in tort law and also criminal spheres of law.

The standard of care required by the common law is that of a reasonable man. Care is the omission to do something that a reasonable man would do or doing something which a reasonable man would not do. Concept of prudent man is a social not a moral judgment

REFERENCES
BOOKS: 1)Richard Kinder, Casebook on Torts, Oxford

New York, 1990. 2)Vera Bermingham, Nutcases, Sweet & Maxwell Limited, 2005. 3)J. N. Pandey, Law of Torts, Central Law Publication, 1999. INTERNET SOURCES: 1)<httpwww.wikipedia.com> visited on 28 August 2010