I am literally a tort litigator in the United States! I worked for several years as a personal injury and product safety litigator.
Although the American legal system holds out “use reasonable care” as its official standard, in practice this gets further defined and specified based on rules found in OSHA, IEEE, or whatever the professional code of practice is for the relevant industry. As a plaintiff’s attorney, if you can’t point to a specific rule or norm that the defendant broke, you’re extremely unlikely to recover any damages. The violation of the rule or the norm is taken as very persuasive evidence that the defendant didn’t use reasonable care—and, conversely, if you can’t point to any crisp rule violation, that’s usually taken as very persuasive evidence that the defendant did use reasonable care.
I am literally a tort litigator in the United States! I worked for several years as a personal injury and product safety litigator.
Although the American legal system holds out “use reasonable care” as its official standard, in practice this gets further defined and specified based on rules found in OSHA, IEEE, or whatever the professional code of practice is for the relevant industry. As a plaintiff’s attorney, if you can’t point to a specific rule or norm that the defendant broke, you’re extremely unlikely to recover any damages. The violation of the rule or the norm is taken as very persuasive evidence that the defendant didn’t use reasonable care—and, conversely, if you can’t point to any crisp rule violation, that’s usually taken as very persuasive evidence that the defendant did use reasonable care.