Young v. Gastro-Intestinal Center, Inc.

Negligence law is based on the premise that we generally owe others a duty to exercise reasonable care as we go about our daily lives. In order to establish a useable legal standard for negligence, courts developed the common law concept of the reasonable person — that paradigm of virtue who sets the bar by always exercising reasonable care. The required “standard of care” undermost circumstances is the level of care our reasonable person would exercise. See W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 32, at p. 173-75 (5th ed. 1984); Morgan v. Cockrell, 173 Ark. 910, 294…