Torts and Personal Injury Flashcards

Under res ipsa loquitur in Texas, a plaintiff uses the doctrine to:

Answer: Create an inference of negligence when the injury type wouldn't normally occur without it and the instrumentality was under the defendant's control

Res ipsa loquitur allows negligence to be inferred when the accident type doesn't normally occur without negligence and the defendant controlled the instrumentality causing harm.

Texas follows the '51% bar' rule for modified comparative negligence. Under this rule, a plaintiff found to be 51% at fault:

Answer: Is completely barred from any recovery

Under Texas's modified comparative fault system, a plaintiff found 51% or more at fault for their own injuries is completely barred from all recovery.

When a defendant's violation of a safety statute constitutes negligence per se, which elements of a negligence case does it establish?

Answer: The duty and breach elements

Negligence per se establishes duty and breach by proving the statutory violation, but the plaintiff must still independently prove causation and damages.

A social host throws a party, knowingly allows a visibly intoxicated adult guest to drive away, and the guest causes a crash. Under Texas law, the social host is:

Answer: Subject to very limited liability because Texas social host law does not impose broad duties for serving alcohol to adults

Texas's Dram Shop Act primarily targets commercial providers; social hosts serving alcohol to non-minor adults face very limited tort liability.

Which scenario best illustrates the 'but-for' test for actual causation in a negligence claim?

Answer: The plaintiff's injury would not have occurred but for the defendant's negligent act

The but-for test asks whether the plaintiff's harm would have occurred if the defendant had not been negligent — if the answer is 'no,' causation is established.

A negligent fire at a hair salon spreads to a neighboring pharmacy, whose stock of flammable chemicals explodes and injures a pedestrian two blocks away. The proximate cause analysis focuses on:

Answer: Whether the pedestrian's injury was a reasonably foreseeable result of negligently starting the fire

Proximate cause analysis asks whether the type of harm that occurred was a reasonably foreseeable result of the defendant's negligence, not merely whether the defendant set events in motion.

Which type of intervening cause most likely constitutes a superseding cause that relieves the original tortfeasor of liability?

Answer: An unforeseeable criminal act by a third party triggered by the original defendant's negligence

A superseding cause is an unforeseeable independent intervening cause that breaks the causal chain; a foreseeable intervening cause — even a criminal one — does not relieve the original tortfeasor.