Unintentional Torts: Professional Negligence

Unintentional Torts

• Professional negligence occurs when a person fails to act as a reasonably prudent person would in a similar circumstance, causing injury to another person or their property.
• Examples of professional negligence include mistaken identity and defects in equipment such as stretchers and wheelchairs leading to patient falls.

Types of Professional Negligence

• Malpractice: a negligence act committed by a person in a professional capacity, resulting from professional misconduct or unreasonable lack of professional skill.
• Incompetence: a lack of ability, which can lead to revocation or suspension of a professional's certificate of registration.

Elements of Professional Negligence

• Existence of a duty on the part of the person
• Failure to meet the standard of due care
• Foreseeability of harm resulting from failure to meet the standard

Causes of Negligence

• Carelessness
• Ignorance
• Lack of skills

Direct Causation

• Failure to use due care causes injury
• Failure to ask about allergies
• Previous experience with drugs and reaction

Damage or Injury

• Actual harm results from professional negligence

Crimes

• Larceny: taking another person's property for permanent use
• Abortion: illegal destruction and bringing forth of a human fetus before natural time of birth

Stages of Crimes

• Consummated: all elements executed with a successful result
• Frustrated: all elements executed without a successful result
• Attempted: not all elements executed, no successful result

Degree of Crimes

• Grave: capital punishment or penalty of above 6 years and one day or fine of more than 6 thousand pesos
• Less grave: penalty of 1 month and 1 day to 6 years or fine of not more than 6 thousand pesos but not less than 200 pesos
• Light: penalty of 1 day to 30 days or fine more than 200 pesos

Four Elements of Negligence (4 D's)

• Duty: to use due care
• Dereliction: failure to use due care
• Direct causation: failure to use due care causes injury
• Damage: actual harm results

Crimes Against Honor

• Defamation: injury to the honor and reputation of another, including slander, libel, and slander by deed

Conspiracy

• A joint agreement of two or more persons, where the act of one is the act of all

Persons Involved in a Conspiracy

• Principals: chief actor/mastermind, those who actually do or perform the act, or those who are actually present and aid in the commission of an act
• Accessories: those who assist or participate in the commission of a crime, or those who assist or encourage the principal offender with the intent to have the crime committed
• Accomplices: those who do not take a direct part in the execution of the act, but induce or cooperate through another act essential to the consumption of the crime

Crimes Against Public Morals

• Illegal gambling: playing for money
• Indecent exposure: intentional exposure of one's private parts in public
• Prostitution: a crime committed by a woman to engage in sexual intercourse for pay

Misdemeanor

• A general name for a criminal offense that does not amount to the grade of a felony