Stephen Hasner | Personal Injury | October 15, 2025
In any personal injury claim, the starting point is a simple but powerful legal idea: the duty of care.
This is a legal responsibility every person has to act with reasonable caution to avoid causing harm to others. When someone breaks this duty and you are injured as a result, the law provides a way for you to hold them accountable. Proving that the at-fault party violated their duty of care is the first and most vital step toward receiving compensation. Without it, there is no case.
This principle applies to countless everyday situations across Georgia. It governs the actions of a driver navigating I-285 in Atlanta, a retail store owner in Savannah, and a doctor in a suburban clinic. Our role is to handle the legal process of proving it, so you can focus on your recovery.
If you have questions about how the duty of care applies to your specific injury, our team is here to provide a straightforward conversation about your situation. Call Hasner Law PC for a no-cost consultation at 678-888-HURT (4878).
Key Takeaways for Georgia Personal Injury Claims
- A breached duty of care is required for a valid claim. You must prove the other party had a responsibility to act safely and failed to do so, directly causing your injury.
- Strong evidence is necessary to prove your case. This includes official reports, photos, videos, witness statements, and expert analysis to establish the other party’s negligence.
- You may still recover compensation even if you are partially at fault. Georgia law allows you to receive a reduced award as long as you are less than 50% responsible for the incident.
What Are the Four Ingredients of a Successful Personal Injury Claim?
After a sudden injury, many people assume that because they were hurt and someone else was clearly involved, they automatically have a strong case. However, the legal system requires you to prove four specific elements of negligence to hold another person or company accountable for your losses.
This is where the at-fault party’s insurance company will focus its investigation. Its representatives will look closely at each of these four points, searching for any weakness or inconsistency that could be used to argue that their client is not responsible.
Here is what we must prove:
- 1. Duty of Care: This is the starting point. We first have to establish that the other party had a legal obligation to act with a certain level of caution to keep you safe.
- 2. Breach of Duty: Next, we must show precisely how that person failed to meet their obligation. This failure is the “negligent” act itself—the driver who looked at a text message, the property owner who ignored a hazardous spill for hours, or the medical professional whose actions fell below the accepted standard of care.
- 3. Causation: We then have to draw a direct line connecting their failure to your injuries. This involves a legal concept called proximate cause. Simply put, we must show that their action (or inaction) was the primary reason you were hurt. For example, the severe neck pain you’re experiencing did not exist before the other driver ran the red light and caused the collision.
- 4. Damages: Finally, we gather evidence to document the full scope of your losses. This includes not only quantifiable costs like medical bills, rehabilitation expenses, and lost income, but also the personal injury non-economic impact of your physical pain and emotional suffering.
Why Duty of Care Is the Foundation of Every Injury Case
Before you can recover compensation in a Georgia personal injury claim, you must prove that the at-fault party owed you a duty of care. This legal obligation is what connects their actions, or failure to act, to your right to seek damages.
It doesn’t matter how severe your injuries are or how reckless the other person behaved. If there was no legal duty to protect you from harm in that situation, then no personal injury claim can move forward.
For example, imagine you’re walking in a public park and get hit by a flying golf ball. If the ball came from a nearby golf course, the golfer (and possibly the course) might owe a duty of care to people in adjacent areas. But if the ball was thrown by a child playing with friends in the park, that child likely had no legal duty to protect strangers from an accidental throw. Without a legal duty, there’s no viable injury claim, even if you were seriously hurt.
What Does “Duty of Care” Actually Look Like in Georgia?
The concept of duty of care is guided by what the law calls the “reasonable person” standard.
This legal standard does not ask what the at-fault person thought was safe or what they intended to do. Instead, it asks: What would a reasonably careful and sensible person have done in the exact same situation? This objective standard applies across various scenarios, holding people to a consistent level of expected caution.
Let’s look at how this plays out in the real world.
For Drivers on the Road
The Duty
Every single driver in Georgia has a clear duty to follow traffic laws, as outlined in the Georgia Motor Vehicles and Traffic Code, and to operate their vehicle in a safe manner. This includes paying attention to their surroundings, not following too closely, yielding the right of way when required, and maintaining control of their vehicle.
Real-Life Example
Imagine a driver merging onto the busy I-75/I-85 Connector in Atlanta. That driver has a duty to check their blind spot and yield to vehicles already on the highway. If they instead turn their head to have a conversation with a passenger and sideswipe your car as a result, they have breached their duty of care.
For Property and Business Owners
The Duty
Under a legal principle known as premises liability, a business owner in Georgia has a duty to keep their property in a reasonably safe condition for customers and other lawful visitors. This means they must regularly inspect their premises for potential hazards, promptly fix any dangerous conditions they discover, and warn visitors of any hazards that cannot be immediately repaired.
Real-Life Example
The manager of a grocery store in Decatur is aware that one of the freezer units is leaking, creating a puddle in the aisle. That manager has a duty to have the spill cleaned up quickly or, at a minimum, place a highly visible warning sign over the area. If they fail to do either for several hours and you slip, fall, and break your hip, they have likely breached their duty of care to you.
For Medical Professionals
The Duty
Doctors, surgeons, nurses, and other healthcare providers have a professional duty to provide a standard of care that a similarly trained and reasonable medical professional would offer under the same circumstances. This standard is based on established medical practices and protocols designed to protect patient safety.
Real-Life Example
During a surgical procedure, the surgeon and operating room staff have a duty to perform a count of all surgical instruments and sponges before closing the incision. If they fail to conduct a final, thorough count and leave a surgical sponge inside the patient, this is a clear breach of the medical standard of care.
For Pet Owners
The Duty
In Georgia, dog owners have a duty to prevent their pets from causing harm to others. This duty is especially high if the owner knows or should know that their dog has aggressive or dangerous tendencies. Many Gwinnett County and other local ordinances include leash laws that reinforce this duty in public spaces.
Real-Life Example
An owner knows their dog has a history of biting and acting aggressively toward strangers. If that owner allows the dog to run loose and off-leash in a public park, and the dog attacks and injures you or your child, the owner has breached their duty to protect others from a foreseeable attack.
How Do We Prove a “Breach of Duty” Actually Happened?
To build a successful personal injury claim, we must support the allegation with concrete evidence. Our firm handles this entire process. We know what to look for and how to secure the evidence needed to build a compelling case.
The types of evidence we frequently use to demonstrate a breach of duty include:
- Police and Incident Reports: In any car accident involving injury or significant property damage, Georgia law mandates that the driver of a vehicle involved in an accident resulting in injury, death, or property damage of $500 or more must immediately notify the local police or state patrol (as stated in O.C.G.A. § 40-6-273). These notices and the resulting police reports provide a formal, immediate record of the event. Similarly, if you are injured on commercial property, an internal incident report is usually created. These official documents provide a formal, immediate record of the event.
- Photographs and Videos: A picture truly is worth a thousand words. Photos of the accident scene, the damage to all vehicles involved, your visible injuries, and the specific hazard that caused a slip and fall are powerful proof. We also work to obtain any available traffic camera footage, nearby business surveillance video, or dashcam recordings that may have captured the incident.
- Witness Statements: Independent witnesses who saw what happened provide an objective account that corroborates your version of events. We take care to contact anyone who was present to get their detailed statement before memories begin to fade.
- Cell Phone Records: In cases involving distracted driving, phone records may be subpoenaed. These records sometimes show whether the at-fault driver was texting, talking on the phone, or using a data-intensive app at the exact moment of the crash, providing strong evidence of their inattention.
- Expert Testimony: For more difficult cases, we may bring in qualified professionals to analyze the evidence. For example, an accident reconstructionist uses physical evidence and engineering principles to show a jury exactly how a collision occurred. In a medical malpractice case, another medical professional will be needed to explain how your doctor’s actions deviated from the accepted standard of care.
- Company Policies and Procedures: When an injury is caused by an employee of a business, we examine the company’s internal safety manuals, training documents, and procedural guidelines. These documents reveal what the company itself knew was the safe way to operate, highlighting an employee’s failure to follow established safety rules.
What If You Believe You Were Partially to Blame?
One of the most common reasons people hesitate to seek legal advice is the fear that they were partially at fault for their own injuries. You might be thinking, “I was glancing at my GPS for a moment,” or “Maybe I should have been watching where I was going more carefully.” This feeling of self-doubt is completely normal, and it is something that insurance companies use to their advantage.
Georgia law addresses this specific situation. Georgia operates under what is called a “modified comparative negligence” rule.
Here’s what that means in simple terms. The law, found in O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, allows you to recover compensation from an at-fault party as long as you are determined to be less than 50% responsible for the incident. During personal injury settlement negotiations or a trial, a percentage of fault will be assigned to each party involved. Your final compensation award is then reduced by whatever percentage of fault is assigned to you.
The threshold is at 50%. If you are found to be 50% or more at fault, you are barred from recovering any compensation at all.
The insurance adjuster for the other party will conduct an investigation aimed at finding any evidence that shifts more blame onto you. Our role is to conduct our own independent and thorough investigation to protect you from being assigned an unfair percentage of fault.
Frequently Asked Questions About Duty of Care
Does the duty of care change if I was trespassing?
Generally, it does. In Georgia, property owners owe a much lower duty of care to trespassers compared to invited guests or customers. While a property owner typically cannot willfully or wantonly injure a trespasser, they do not have the same legal responsibility to inspect for dangers or warn them about potential hazards.
How does duty of care work in a work-from-home injury?
This is a developing area of the law that is becoming more defined. An employer’s duty to provide a safe working environment may extend somewhat to an employee’s home office, particularly concerning issues like providing ergonomically sound equipment. These types of claims are becoming more frequent and intersect with Georgia’s workers’ compensation system.
What’s the difference between negligence and duty of care?
Duty of care is just one component of a larger legal claim. Negligence is the legal term for the entire claim, which requires proving all four elements we discussed earlier: a duty of care existed, that duty was breached, the breach caused your injuries, and you suffered damages as a result.
What is the difference between a duty of care and the standard of care?
A duty of care refers to the legal obligation a person or company owes to others to act with reasonable caution. The standard of care defines the level of caution required by that duty.
In a typical car accident case, the duty is to drive safely, and the standard is what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.
How does duty of care apply to a hit-and-run accident?
The at-fault driver still owes a duty of care to all other drivers on the road. The breach of this duty causes the accident. Even if the driver flees, the legal claim for negligence remains valid. In this situation, you pursue the claim against your own uninsured motorist (UM) policy.
Your UM coverage steps in to cover the damages the at-fault driver’s insurance would have paid.
Can a business owner transfer their duty of care to a cleaning company?
No. A business owner in Georgia owes a direct, non-delegable duty to keep their premises reasonably safe for invited guests. While the business may hire an outside cleaning or maintenance company, and that company may also bear liability for its own negligence, the property owner retains the primary legal duty of care to customers and lawful visitors.
Don’t Let Uncertainty About Fault Prevent You From Seeking Help
The legal concept of “duty of care” exists to hold people and companies accountable when their failure to act with reasonable caution causes injury to others. Proving that this duty was breached is the core of a personal injury claim, and it is our job to handle that process. Working with an experienced Atlanta personal injury lawyer ensures that every element—duty, breach, causation, and damages—is properly established through evidence and legal strategy
We have years of experience investigating accidents, gathering the necessary evidence, and presenting the facts in a way that clearly shows what really happened.
You do not have to face the legal system alone while also trying to heal from your injuries. Let us help you understand your legal rights and see a clear path forward.For a no-cost, no-obligation discussion about your case, call Hasner Law PC at 678-888-HURT (4878).
