Assignment 3 (Negligence)
Date: February 19, 213
To: Judge Stephan Haas
Re: Negligence Judgement
Facts:
The plaintiff, Alan was in the terminal at O’Hare airport in Chicago, and while running to catch his the plane he slipped on a banana peel, which he had not seen. When he slipped on the peel, it caused him to slide across the floor and hit his head on a metal container and suffers a severe head injury. The plaintiff, then files a negligence suit against the airport. O’Hare maintains that after an investigation into the incident revealed that the banana peel was brownish when the plaintiff slipped on it. The defendant maintains that the peel could have just been dropped by another passenger, and has no idea how it got there.
Issue:
Does the plaintiff, Alan have a legal basis against O’Hare airport for negligence, and does O’Hare have a legal basis for a summary judgement against the plaintiff due to lack of evidence on the part of the plaintiff?
Applicable Law:
Under Illinois rules of negligence, 1-14 Illinois Tort Law § 14.01 the term negligence is applied both to conduct and to a cause of action. Some courts, following the Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, define negligence as "the failure to do something which a reasonably careful person would do or doing something which a reasonably careful person would not do." This standard applies to the conduct of the defendant. It may also apply to the plaintiff when contributory negligence is an issue.
Although Illinois state courts have not adopted the "Hand Formula" articulated in United States v. Carroll Towing Co., the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has applied it in negligence cases governed by Illinois law to define the negligence standard. Under the "Hand Formula," negligence involves determining whether the burden of precaution is less than the magnitude of the accident, if