Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - William Shakespeare & John Fletcher - McNair J & Bolam v Friern Hospital 1957 - A Montrose - Alderson B & Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks 1856 - Mary Wollstonecraft -
No, but I can arrest you for negligence. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s5e10: Rapture, Odo to Quark
O negligence,
Fit for a fool to fall by! William Shakespeare & John Fletcher, All is True/Henry VIII III ii 214-215, Cardinal Wolsey
In the realm of diagnosis and treatment there is ample scope for genuine difference of opinion, and one man clearly is not negligent merely because his conclusion differs from that of other professional men, nor because he has displayed less skill or knowledge than others would have done. The true test for establishing negligence in diagnosis or treatment on the part of a doctor is whether he has been proved to be guilty of such failure as no doctor of ordinary skill would be guilty of it acting with ordinary care. McNair J, Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 2 All ER 118
Experts may blind themselves by expertise. The courts should protect the citizen against risks which professional men and others may ignore. Professor A Montrose, Is Negligence an Ethical or a Sociological Concept? 1958
Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do. The defendants might have been liable for negligence, if, unintentionally, they omitted to do that which a reasonable person would have done, or did that which a person taking reasonable precautions would not have done. Alderson B, Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks 1856 11 Ex R781
A great proportion of the misery that wanders in hideous form around the world is allowed to arise from the negligence of parents. Mary Wollstonecraft