To be found negligent, one must prove the four elements that establish whether the case is ruled negligent or not. The four elements to look for include duty, the breach of duty, causation, and damages. When one is declared negligent, the court rewards one of three kinds of damages to the plaintiff, which could include compensatory damages, punitive damages or nominal damages.
In the case of Stehlik v. Rhoads, 99-3326, Rhoads was declared negligent for not providing his friend with the appropriate equipment to ride an ATV after a night of drinking. Due to not having the proper safety equipment, the plaintiff, Stehlik suffered major head injuries after crashing into a cement wall. Medical officials agreed that if Stehlik had been wearing…show more content… Hospice Support Care, Inc. case No. 032758. as negligent in favor of Cowan. The plaintiff, Cowan’s elderly mother was under twenty-four hour care of a nurse and had to be moved. As she was being transferred from one room to another, her leg was caught on something and no one did anything about it. During the rest of her stay, which was about a week, the support center provided her with morphine as a way to get the pain to go away but she had not been examined by a medical official. After the news that she needed to be rushed to surgery to have her leg amputated, Cowan died during the procedure due to complications. If Cowan had been seen by a doctor, the facility would have known that she had broken her femur, and her leg could have been saved from needing to be surgically removed. “Hospice argued in court that charities should be immune from liability for all degrees of negligence because the absence of such immunity would discourage them from performing their beneficial activities.” A judge declared Hospice Support Care negligent in three ways, gross, willful and wanton negligence. I agree with the court's decision because the facility’s job is to make sure our loved ones are being taken of. One should not have to fear that their elderly loved one is in danger of dying when you put your trust into these people to watch them twenty-four hours of
