Martinez, a licensed electrician, has a diagnosed hand tremor. She routinely uses specially designed stabilizing tools and other precautions to compensate for the tremor when performing wiring work. During a residential installation a client is accidentally shocked and sues Martinez for negligence.
Applying the reasonably prudent person standard, how should Martinez's physical impairment be taken into account in deciding whether she breached her duty of care?
The mere fact that she has a tremor constitutes negligence per se whenever an electrical injury occurs.
The tremor automatically excuses any inadvertent mistake that leads to injury because she cannot fully control it.
It is irrelevant; she is judged by the care required of an ordinary electrician without a tremor.
She must exercise the care that a reasonably prudent electrician with a similar tremor would use, including appropriate safety precautions.
A person with a physical disability is required to exercise the amount of care that a reasonably prudent person who has the same disability would use in the same circumstances. Martinez's tremor is therefore treated as one of the circumstances: she must take the precautions that a reasonable electrician with a similar tremor would take-such as using stabilizing tools and other risk-reducing techniques. If she in fact employed those precautions, she may have met the standard; if she failed to do so, a breach can be found. The other options either ignore the disability, automatically excuse liability, or convert the mere existence of the disability into negligence per se, none of which reflects the proper rule.
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