I wrote a research paper about a year ago on this very subject.
There was a landmark case that established a test to determine the standard of care for the tort of negligence. Briefly, a tugboat company was moving a barge and encountered severe weather and sank. The owner of the barge sued the tugboat company for negligence on the basis that the tugboats lacked radios and did not receive weather reports the day they sank. The tugboat company argued that very few companies had radios on their tugs at the time and it was not considered an industry best practice.
The court stated that ?reasonable prudence is not necessarily common prudence.? It doesn?t matter what everyone else is doing. The court agreed that the tugboat company was negligent in its failure to adopt new radios in their tugboats.
Judge Learned Hand found the tugboat companies liable because they did not use readily available technology, the radio receivers, to listen for broadcast weather reports, even though the use of radios was not yet standard industry practice.
http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/T.J._Hooper
United States v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d 169 (Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. 1947).
The T. J. Hooper, 287 U.S. 662; 53 S. Ct. 220; 77 L. Ed. 571; U.S. LEXIS 387 (U. S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 1932).
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Established Case Law
I wrote a research paper about a year ago on this very subject.
There was a landmark case that established a test to determine the standard of care for the tort of negligence. Briefly, a tugboat company was moving a barge and encountered severe weather and sank. The owner of the barge sued the tugboat company for negligence on the basis that the tugboats lacked radios and did not receive weather reports the day they sank. The tugboat company argued that very few companies had radios on their tugs at the time and it was not considered an industry best practice.
The court stated that ?reasonable prudence is not necessarily common prudence.? It doesn?t matter what everyone else is doing. The court agreed that the tugboat company was negligent in its failure to adopt new radios in their tugboats.
http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/T.J._Hooper
United States v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d 169 (Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. 1947).
The T. J. Hooper, 287 U.S. 662; 53 S. Ct. 220; 77 L. Ed. 571; U.S. LEXIS 387 (U. S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 1932).