Write 5-6 sentences for your response: Giving Your Comments/Thoughts for following information For the court to find that you were negligent they would need to show that you owed a duty to the plainti ff, you breached that duty, your breach caused the plaintiffs injury, and the plaintiff suffered legally recognized damages. If this had been an adult the courts likely would have found the actions to be outrageous and performed in a reckless manner. Both of these would have helped you with your negligence defense as the outcome of a reckless act is ownership on the person committing the action. However, since this was a child who likely has very little common sense, and the inability to fully reason the risk of jumping off a pier, there is a greater duty of care. Under the reasonable person standard most would agree that you had a duty to help the child, either by attempting a rescue yourself or notifying someone who could help (i.e the parents). I am assuming the child drowned, or was indeed swallowed by a shark, based on the verbiage in your story. This would constitute injury to the child as well as the family, giving causation to the case. It is also open to the question of foreseeability. In your story you mention that the child jump off the pier and the parents were clueless about Jr. becoming shark bait". Your statement is an acknowledgment that you were aware of the foreseeable risk of injury. Award from the court based on evidence of under the negligence law is likely to include compensatory damages. An award for punitive damages could also be awarded if they feel the negligence was gross in nature. Your defenses may include assumption of risk by the child and contributory negligence, but again, being so young it is unlikely the reasonable person would conclude he had the ability to predetermine the risks of his actions, nor the capable of looking out for himself. Also working against you is the fact that California does not employ a pure contributory negligence rule. It used to be that under the contributory negligence rule a plaintiff could not recover damages if they had any fault in the incident (as low as 1%). Now the state has adopted a pure comparative negligence law which allows recovery of damages even if they are partially to blame. This will make your case harder to win because even if a judge and jury find the child and his parents had some responsibility to prevent injury or react to the action, they can still find fault with your omission of action to help and award damages. The benefit to comparative way of judgement is that your damages could be reduced by the percentage to which the plaintiff was responsible. If this case had occurred in another state, say Maine, you would be held to a modified comparative negligence law under which no award would be given if the responsibility of the plaintiff was at least 50%. You asked us to discuss use the laws of negligence in our discussion but I would argue that you were not negligent. I would push for a judgment in favor of an intentional tort by omission of action based on your statement. You made comments about Jr. becoming shark bait, seeing the parents were inattentive, and hearing the screams but choosing to open another brew. It is an acknowledgment that you were aware the child was in trouble and there were significant impending consequences, yet still made a conscious decision to do nothing, including yell for help. This is all assuming your statement was made to authorities and could be entered into evidence