Negligence per se
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Negligence per se is the legal doctrine whereby certain acts are considered intrinsically negligent. This occurs when an actor's violation of a statute (or regulation) causes the kind of harm the statute was intending to prevent. In some jurisdictions, negligence per se creates merely a presumption of negligence.
As a typical example, suppose a contractor violated a building code when constructing a house; the house collapses and somebody is injured. The violation of the building code establishes negligence per se and the contractor will be found negligent, so long as the contractor's breach of the code was the cause (proximate cause and actual cause) of the injury.
The Restatement (Third) of Torts § 14 (Tentative Draft No. 1, March 28, 2001) addresses negligence per se. Also see Grable & Sons Metal Prods. v. Darue Eng'g & Mfg., 125 S. Ct. 2363, 2370 (2005).