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The reasonable person is a legal fiction of the common law representing an objective standard against which any individual's conduct can be measured. It is used to determine if a breach of the standard of care has occurred, provided a duty of care can be proven. The standard performs a crucial role in determining negligence in both criminal law—that is, criminal negligence—and tort law. The standard also has a presence in contract law, though its use there is substantially different. The standard does not exist independently of other circumstances within a case which could affect an individual's judgment. The first appearance of the reasonable person standard was in the English case of Vaughan v. Menlove (1837).[1] In Menlove, the defendant had stacked hay on his rental property in a manner prone to spontaneous ignition. After repeated warnings over the course of five weeks, the hay ignited and burned the defendant's barns and stable, and then spread to the landlord's two cottages on the adjacent property. Menlove's attorney admitted his client's "misfortune of not possessing the highest order of intelligence," arguing that negligence should only be found if the jury decided Menlove had not acted with "bona fide [and] to the best of his [own] judgment."
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