A Torts Issue on The Validity of The Reasonable Standard: Two Cases Examined

Despite the often characterized sue-happy, litigious nature found in American society and culture today, there remains the need for a logical discourse pertaining to sorting out an answer to the following question at hand: Is there an intention to cause harm in any specified case, thereby comprising a situation of true negligence? The answer to this is not as easy or clearcut as one might imagine. Before describing what this essay is all about, perhaps it is valuable to also recognize the complexity of another question, purely in the rhetorical sense. Does the law a set standard for human conduct, or does human conduct determine standards of the law? This essay revolves around the notion of torts law and attempts to clarify whether intentional harm or damage has occurred, in terms of what is known as negligence, or if circumstances resulted in a less-than-pleasing outcome by way of an innocent mishap. As Paul Hayden explains how the plaintiff must prove that the defendant who caused harm “had a duty to behave” towards him or her in a manner that demonstrated the same as a “reasonable and prudent person under the same or similar circumstances” would have done and if not, of course breaching the standard (45). Additionally, the analysis herein uses two cases to discuss the concept.

This exploration first considers, is the reasonable standard an objective standard? If not, is it a subjective standard? Drawing from the course readings and cases Box v. South Georgia Railway Company and Van Horn v. Watson, the concept of the reasonable standard is explained in some sense to be an objective or subjective one. A chief point is to try and figure out whether this standard establishes a fair way to determine liability and to furthermore unravel why or why not. It may be easy or trite to offer an oversimplified one-liner to arrive at a cogent conclusion. Is the reasonable standard reasonable? This inquest cuts to the chase. The fact of the matter is that the reasonable standard can be a fair way to discover liability and therefore objective, yet it may be deemed subjective too depending upon the case, special circumstances, and people involved on both sides of the aisle.

In Box v. South Georgia the situation involved a railway accident resulting in death. According to LexisNexis documentation of the case, “appellee decedent was killed by a train operated by appellant railway” and in which the first trial “the court directed a verdict for the defendant railroad”  (“433 F.2d 89; 1970 U.S. App. LEXIS 6974”). In this case apparently, the court did flip its original decision and judgment away from favoring the defendant, to upholding the plaintiff's claim on decedent's behalf. It seems as though – somewhat philosophically speaking – if the reasonable standard is perfectly objective standard then either one of two things should have originally occurred in the measure of jurisprudence in the situation. If the reasonable standard is perfectly objective, then there should have been no need for a second trial. 

The reason why there should have been no cause for a second trial in the case of Box v. South Georgia is because had reasonable standard been perfectly objective, and consistently and infallibly aligned with what is right and fair, the judgment would have leaned the court decision towards favoring for the plaintiff in the first place. The law can be a discombobulated set of intricacies and difficult to untangle at best. On the face of things, a fatal injury is always tragic. The simplicity of any such harmful occurrence can be immediately assumed to have been the result of negligence on the part of the party so deemed responsible. Having said that, of course there are cases in which upon first glance might appear as though intentional harm was caused, but could have actually been different. For example in the case of a suicide. Humans have deliberately in the light of dire and desperate situations jumped in front of a moving train, with the aim of causing deathly harm to themselves. 

Reasonable standard in the case of Box v. South Georgia, and it is believed to this writer's mind in any case, is only as objective and sound as are the parties involved. The parties involved refers to the legal representatives in the respective jurisdictional courts, such as attorneys and judges who sit on the bench. The fact that widowed mother of eight, Josie Ellis was tragically hit by the train while taking a shortcut across the tracks and the fact that the South Georgia Railway Company crewmen were the only witnesses certainly plays a role. In simply a way of playing devil's advocate in the situation consider the following. What if Josie Ellis had been particularly depressed that day, feeling down and out from having to raise her brood without a man and herself was either negligent in looking to see whether the train was coming or didn't care about living anymore. Granted this is not a popular view. However, life could not have been easy for the woman, nor for the brakemen engineers to witness such a horrible accident right before their eyes. 

Also, it is not always possible to present undoubted evidential proof of some wrongdoing, or intent to harm. This is uniquely the case oftentimes when the directly offended person ends up dead. Obviously unable to speak for himself or herself, an opportunity would, therefore, be missing for legislators to receive a firsthand account of the incident by decedents who were harmed. See the point? When you consider this very sad case the main idea is to concede what Paul Hayden astutely speculates “thus the reasonable person standard of conduct, that ideal that when breached may give rise to legal liability in tort truly imposes a social [italics mine] standard of conduct” (45). Social norms always come into play. This can clearly be seen by a brief perusal of a fair assessment of United States history. Institutional racism, modern-day policing, and a long record of inequitable legal renderings reflect how the reasonable standard can be skewed, often going embarrassingly awry – alas, transforming the reasonable standard from objective to a subjective one. 

Everyone knows that any legal proceedings involve interpretation of the laws, statutes, and regulations, social norms as Hayden has reminded, and custom. At one point in history and time, it would have been customary in the overall sense of the word, for southern states to inflict prejudicial and detrimental ruling decisions against persons of certain skin colors regardless of their guilt or innocence. Intelligent legal professionals, as well as responsible, mindful citizens who may sit upon juries, must keep this realization in their thoughts. Whether the reasonable standard is objective or subjectively unfair is the letter of the law, so to speak. The heart of the law is the spirit of the thing. And no good thing can come out of a lie at the end of the day.  

The second case presented to help engage the discussion on the objective or objective nature of the reasonable standard is Van Horn v. Watson. The woman filed a suit, in this case, pertaining to her having obtained her physical paralysis as a wrongful result of harm caused in California by being removed from an accident vehicle (“45 Cal. 4th 322; 197 P.3d 164; 86 Cal. Rptr. 3d 350; 2008 Cal. LEXIS 14589”). In a direct quote from the Procedural Posture of the file, “the trial court granted summary judgment for the defendant” per statute under California law categorized under Health & Safety Code specified regulations (“45 Cal. 4th 322; 197 P.3d 164; 86 Cal. Rptr. 3d 350; 2008 Cal. LEXIS 14589”). Enough said. Or in fact, is enough said. Imagine this general scenario. 

You find yourself the victim of bodily injuries, trapped perhaps in a car whereby you cannot move a muscle. All is tense. Emergency vehicles herald their trumpeted calls blaring in the distance, louder, until the red firetruck and ambulance make their way to where you are. Meanwhile? A kindly meaning person as gently as possible manages to remove you from the vehicle thinking that a gas leakage from the car may cause an explosion, as children are carelessly playing with sparklers and firecrackers nearby. See the problem? This fake scenario involves an untrained bystander, yet in fact, is imperative to understand that the Health & Safety legal code in California has to do with emergency care rendered at the scene of an emergency. Now you can be sure there is plenty of legal mumbo-jumbo in terms of whether such helpful persons came in the form of untrained Good Samaritans or trained emergency medical care personnel. At this point it is appropriate to stick to the case at hand.

In this case of Van Horn v. Watson, the defendant did not falsely admit to having professional skills on par with trained medical rescuers. She “did not contend that she rendered emergency medical care and therefore could not claim the immunity” (“45 Cal. 4th 322; 197 P.3d 164; 86 Cal. Rptr. 3d 350; 2008 Cal. LEXIS 14589”). It does not take a brain scientist to figure out what could go wrong in terms of evaluation of the reasonable standard as being objective, or unfairly subjective. Common logical sense tells one that if the defendant did not know about the immunity statute being tied to the specifics of claiming to administer emergency medical care – as it were, although unprofessional – then how could the defendant actively avail a defense to this end? That is what lawyers and the cogent cognizance of judges are for. 

Despite the outcome in this specific case, the point of the matter in Van Horn v. Watson brings to mind a plethora of complexities under the circumstances. Immunity, good Samaritan laws, and interpretation come into play. Once again as hinted earlier, the law is only as good as the human beings directly involved in rendering sound decisions of jurisprudence are fair. What might be objective in the reasonable standard in one case, could be interpreted as a biased subjective unfairness to determine liability in another. Who knew? From one point of view one could back up and blame the party who caused the traffic accident in the first place. Where was blame then? If the plaintiff was actually the party who through her own negligence caused the accident, she might be guilty of reckless driving. Also, where is the grateful attitude? One, though perhaps confined for life to a wheelchair, granted a tough hit to take, can embrace gratitude of being alive. 

Although there is an “acting carefully” clause in the California Torts section documenting the duty of one under the “Duty-Good Samaritan Rule” section as found in the Lexis reference aforementioned. The situation further becomes complicated when considering how the legal constraints might conform to a working definition of what is acting carefully. The primary way to avoid foolhardy trapdoors is for judges to sensitively weigh each case and circumstance, as the reasonable standard can change between objective or subjective in any given situation. 

Works Cited

433 F.2d 89; 1970 U.S. App. LEXIS 6974. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/25. {Box v. South Georgia}

2009 Cal. LEXIS 1836. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/25. {Van Horn v. Watson}

Goldberg, John C. P., Anthony James Sebok, and Benjamin C Zipursky. Tort law. Austin: Wolters Kluwer law & business, 2010. Print

Hayden, Paul. “Cultural Norms as Law: Tort Law's “Reasonable Person” Standard of Care.” Journal of American Culture 15.1 (1992): 45-55. Web. 25 July 2013. {published online 4 June 2004}