What is Duty of Care in Kentucky?

If you or someone close to you has been injured in an accident, you may be able to claim compensation by showing that someone else failed in their “duty of care.” This concept is the basis of most personal injury claims. Your lawyer will use it to determine whether you can hold another party legally liable and seek compensation.

If you are wondering whether someone should have done, or failed to do, something that would have prevented your accident, consult a Lexington personal injury attorney at Gary C. Johnson P.S.C. Attorneys at Law. We will examine your case and determine whether you may be eligible for compensation.

The Duty of Care Explained

To establish a legal obligation to an accident victim in Kentucky, the first step is to identify the duty of care. Kentucky courts typically frame duty around foreseeability of harm and reasonable conduct under the circumstances.

As a simple example, anyone driving a vehicle should drive in a way that keeps other road users safe. Another example could be a business that manufactures a product. Its duty of care requires it to take steps to ensure the product is safe for use.

Kentucky’s laws and legal precedents demonstrate how the law applies the duty of care in practice. For instance, KRS 189.290 requires drivers to operate their vehicles in a way that protects other road users. Laws like these demonstrate how parties should act responsibly, taking steps to avoid causing harm to others.

How to Show That a Party Had a Duty of Care

The approaches used to establish a duty of care owed by one party to another vary depending on the circumstances of the accident. It can be very simple or highly complex, depending on context. A few examples of evidence used to show the duty of care demonstrate this.

• Car accidents: your car accident lawyer in Lexington will look for a breach of laws or regulations
• Premises accidents: we determine premises liability by identifying failures to reasonably maintain the property or warn of known or foreseeable hazards.
• Medical malpractice: we determine whether healthcare practitioners’ failure to adhere to professional standards of care
• Product liability: a company may fail to implement safe designs, quality control during manufacturing, or fail to warn against inherent hazards

Apart from showing that a duty of care was present, your attorney must show that the duty was breached, and that the breach caused your accident or injury.

Breach of the Duty of Care and Causation

If you hope to claim compensation, showing that an acknowledged duty of care was breached and that the breach caused your accident, which in turn led to your damages, will be crucial to your case.

Again, examples help to illustrate this. If a driver failed to stop at a red traffic light and collided with your vehicle, it is clear that their duty was to stop at the traffic light. Now, it is only necessary to show that this led to a collision and that you incurred damages during the resulting accident.

The link between breach of duty of care, causation, and damages can be far more complex than this. For example, you tripped and fell because of damaged stairway carpeting. If the damage occurred minutes before your fall, it may not be reasonable to suppose that a responsible party knew about the unsafe condition in time to take action.

Taking this a step further, you only consulted a doctor several days after you were injured in a trip and fall accident. In this case, defendants may argue that you could have sustained your injuries elsewhere, or that your failure to see a doctor contributed more to your injuries than the original fall did.

An Experienced Lawyer Works to Navigate the Complexities of Duty of Care and Causation

Although the concept of duty of care is comparatively easy to understand, showing that it was present, that a lack of care caused your accident, and even that the accident caused your injuries may be more complex than you expected.

Choose a lawyer experienced in handling accidents similar to yours to assess your case. At Gary C. Johnson Attorneys at Law, your first consultation is free. Discover your legal options after an accident in Kentucky. Simply contact us to secure your appointment.