listing the elements of a negligence claim: “(1) legal duty on the part of the defendant to conform to a certain standard of conduct to protect others against unreasonable risks; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a proximate cause between the conduct and the resulting injury; and (4) actual damages to the claimant’s person or property”
How later courts described this case
- listing the elements of a negligence claim: “(1) legal duty on the part of the defendant to conform to a certain standard of conduct to protect others against unreasonable risks; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a proximate cause between the conduct and the resulting injury; and (4) actual damages to the claimant’s person or property”
- explaining punitive damages are submissible when defendant knows “or had reason to know that there was a high degree of probability that the action would result in injury”
- explaining “knowledge is an element that must [often] be included in a negligence instruction in order to impose the existence of the claimed duty” (footnote omitted)
- holding the basic elements of a prima facie negligence claim are duty, breach of that duty, causation, and damages
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
DONNELLY, Judge,
concurring.
I suspect that the Court violates Article I, § 10 of the Constitution of Missouri when, in any event, it allows punitive damages and thereby “circumvent[s] due process by delegating punitive functions to private litigants and civil courts.” Grass, The Penal Dimensions of Punitive Damages, 12 Hastings Const. L.Q. 241 (1985). See also Wheeler, The Constitutional Case *438 for Reforming Punitive Damages, 69 Va.L. Rev. 269 (1983).
I concur.