Also known as: reasonable person standard of care · prudent person standard of care · reasonably prudent person · reasonable person test · objective standard of care
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The objective measure of conduct required to avoid negligence liability. It requires an actor to behave as a person of ordinary prudence would under the same or similar circumstances.
Officer Ramirez sees a man matching a robbery description exit a store carrying a bag and ignore repeated stop commands while heading toward an alley. The officer pursues and tackles the man, causing injury. The man sues for negligence. The jury measures the officer's conduct against the care a reasonably prudent person would exercise under the same circumstances.
Pitcher Ralph Richardson warms up by throwing a baseball toward the stands rather than his catcher during a game at Fenway Park. The ball strikes spectator Rosa Ruiz, who is sitting in the bleachers and suffers injury. Ruiz sues for negligence. The jury measures Richardson's throw against the care a reasonably prudent pitcher would exercise under the same game conditions.
On September 16, 1975, a professional baseball game took place at Fenway Park in Boston between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox. The plaintiff David Manning was seated as a spectator in the right field bleachers behind a wire mesh fence. Defendant Ross Grimsley, a pitcher employed by defendant Baltimore Baseball Club, Inc., was warming up in the bullpen near those bleachers during the first three innings by throwing a ball from the pitcher's mound to a plate. Spectators in the bleachers continuously heckled Grimsley. On several occasions immediately following the heckling, Grimsley looked directly at the hecklers rather than merely into the stands. At the end of the third inning, after his catcher had left the catching position and was walking toward the bench, Grimsley faced the bleachers, wound up or stretched as though to pitch toward the plate, and threw the ball at more than eighty miles per hour at a ninety-degree angle directly toward the hecklers. The ball passed through the wire mesh fence and struck the plaintiff. Witness Murphy testified that Grimsley had an angry, frustrated look on his face when he released the ball and that he looked directly at people in the stands immediately after verbal remarks. Witness Goldsmith testified that Grimsley looked right directly at the hecklers and that it was right after the comments they yelled. The plaintiff brought a diversity action in federal district court against Grimsley and the Baltimore Club asserting both a battery count and a negligence count. The district judge directed a verdict for the defendants on the battery count. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants on the negligence count, and the district court entered judgment for the defendants on both counts. The plaintiff appealed from the judgment on the battery count to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
View caseNo. The standard remains objective. An adult defendant's mental deficiency does not relieve liability for conduct that falls short of what a reasonably prudent person would do under like circumstances.
Supporting sources
Once a person takes charge of a helpless individual, the standard requires that person to exercise the care a reasonably prudent person would use in providing aid and securing safety. Failure to do so can result in liability for additional harm caused.
Supporting sources
The standard is objective. It measures conduct against what a reasonably prudent person would do, not against the defendant's own abilities or judgment.
Supporting sources
…the time in question failed to exercise ordinary care or due care. The words “ordinary care” or “due care” mean the care that a reasonably prudent person would use under circumstances similar to those shown to have existed by the evidence in this case. The law doesn’t say how a reasonably careful or prudent person would act under those…