AZ Bar Torts 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What are the four elements a plaintiff must prove to establish a negligence claim?
- Duty, breach, causation, and damages (Correct answer)
- Intent, act, causation, and harm
- Duty, knowledge, foreseeability, and injury
- Breach, intent, proximate cause, and damages
Correct answer: Duty, breach, causation, and damages
Negligence requires proof of duty, breach of that duty, causation (actual and proximate), and resulting damages.
Question 2: Under the traditional common law rule, what duty does a landowner owe to a trespasser?
- A duty of reasonable care under the circumstances
- A duty to warn of all known dangers on the property
- A duty to refrain from willful or wanton injury (Correct answer)
- No legal duty whatsoever
Correct answer: A duty to refrain from willful or wanton injury
Under traditional common law, landowners owe trespassers only a duty to refrain from willful, wanton, or reckless conduct that causes injury.
Question 3: The 'reasonable person' standard in negligence is best described as:
- What the defendant subjectively believed was reasonable under the circumstances
- What an ordinary person of ordinary prudence would do under similar circumstances (Correct answer)
- What a highly skilled professional would do in the same situation
- What the average community member would prefer as a matter of policy
Correct answer: What an ordinary person of ordinary prudence would do under similar circumstances
The reasonable person standard is an objective one — what a person of ordinary prudence would do under the same or similar circumstances, not what this particular defendant believed.
Question 4: Under the 'but-for' test of actual causation, a defendant's conduct is the cause in fact of the plaintiff's harm if:
- The defendant's conduct was the most significant contributing cause of the harm
- The harm would not have occurred but for the defendant's negligent conduct (Correct answer)
- The defendant's conduct materially increased the risk of the plaintiff's harm
- A reasonable person would foresee the defendant's conduct causing this type of harm
Correct answer: The harm would not have occurred but for the defendant's negligent conduct
The but-for test asks whether the plaintiff's harm would not have occurred but for the defendant's negligent conduct; if harm would have occurred anyway, causation fails.
Question 5: Which doctrine allows a court to infer negligence from the fact of an accident without direct proof of specific negligent acts?
- Negligence per se
- Res ipsa loquitur (Correct answer)
- Respondeat superior
- Last clear chance
Correct answer: Res ipsa loquitur
Res ipsa loquitur ('the thing speaks for itself') permits an inference of negligence when the accident is of a type that ordinarily does not occur absent negligence and was caused by an instrumentality in the defendant's control.
Question 6: Negligence per se is established when a defendant violates a statute and:
- The defendant's conduct shocks the conscience of the court
- The plaintiff is in the class protected by the statute and suffers the type of harm it was designed to prevent (Correct answer)
- The defendant violates any law, regardless of the class of persons protected
- The court finds the defendant acted with reckless disregard for public safety
Correct answer: The plaintiff is in the class protected by the statute and suffers the type of harm it was designed to prevent
Negligence per se applies when a defendant violates a statute designed to protect against the type of harm suffered and the plaintiff is within the class of persons the statute was designed to protect.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes proximate (legal) cause in negligence law?
- The factual link between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff's harm
- A policy-based limitation on liability for harms that are too remote or unforeseeable (Correct answer)
- The requirement that the defendant's act directly and immediately cause the plaintiff's injury
- The standard used to determine whether a duty of care exists between the parties
Correct answer: A policy-based limitation on liability for harms that are too remote or unforeseeable
Proximate cause is a policy-based concept that limits a defendant's liability to consequences that are reasonably foreseeable, preventing unlimited liability for every but-for cause.
AZ Bar Torts 1
What are the four elements a plaintiff must prove to establish a negligence claim?