The Law on Recovery for Psychiatric Injury Caused by Negligence is Essay

The Law on Recovery for Psychiatric Injury Caused by Negligence is Strongly in Need of Reform - Essay Example This is because there must be actual psychiatric injury that is easy to prove which makes sorrow, grief and fear not sufficient to win a case. For a defendant to be established as negligent, the claimant must be able to prove three things.2 First aspect, the claimant must prove that the defendant owed the claimant a duty of care which is a responsibility to avoid sloppy actions that could cause damage to one or more persons. The duty of care is further explained as the responsibility of ensuring that you do not do any harm or fail to do something that may likely injure your neighbor. The law however does not give details on who the neighbor is supposed to be. This is one of the reasons that the law should be amended since it does not give a clear definition of who our neighbor is, if it is a person one closely relates to, people defined by property proximity or people you relate with everyday. The next factor considered in duty of care, the claimant must provide evidence that the def endant failed to grant the appropriate standard of care that a sensible person would have provided in similar circumstances.3 The standard of care is explained as a way of measuring how well and much care a reasonable person owes another. There are rules that come with this duty, whether the defendant is a learner, child or a professional because standards differ from one person to another. Some people’s standards of care are higher than others depending on your call of duty or even your line of work. Drivers and doctors, for example, have a higher standard of care toward other people than the reasonable human being because there are responsible to other people’s lives than themselves. It does not matter whether they are learners of profession since there standards of duty are set much higher than other professions. This law is determined by so many factors which makes it ambiguous to prove ones guilt or innocence. Example for people with the skill to do something that any reasonable person would not be able to do is charged with negligence for lack of standard to care of duty. There is also the situation where a child commits a deed with intention of harming others are judged as adults yet there are other rules applied to the same misconduct if the person is of a certain age group. There should be many factors when deciding reasonable standards of duty and care for reasonable people. Example, if there could have been prevention from both parties to avoid more harm and what cautions could be taken by reasonable persons. All the risks involved and the degree of the same by the claimant to reasonable person. Extent of the harm will also be well thought-out in court. The damage to the claimant will be taken into account as there may be two similar damages but of different magnitude which will be unfair to rule equally yet the extent of damage to one was more than the other. It is important to ensure that all the three consideration are taken into ac count so that all the claimants affected by psychiatric disorder caused by negligence are given a fair trial. The claimant must also verify that the events of the defendant were the reason of the plaintiff’s injuries or breakdown. Influencing the cause, known as getting facts, is time and again done by applying but for experiment. Damage would not have happened but for the defendant’s measures. If a driver takes a group of people on a road trip and fails to install seat belts in the car and they