Are different people held to different standards of care?
The level of reasonable care required varies, depending on whether you are an adult, child or professional. Reasonable person standard – An adult is guilty of negligence if he or she fails to act the way a person of ordinary intelligence and judgment would have acted in similar circumstances. Only in a very narrow set of circumstances involving dangerous instrumentalities can a parent be held responsible for the negligence of a child. La Torre v. Genesee Management, Inc., 90 N.Y.2d 576 (1997). In addition, children are not held to the same level of care as adults. A child’s conduct is measured against what would be expected from a similar child of like age, intelligence and experience under similar circumstances. Because a child does not have the same mental capacity or life experience as an adult, the courts recognize that in some instances a child should not be held responsible for otherwise “negligent” behavior. For this reason, children of very young ages generally cannot be held l
