Reasonable person





The reasonable man or reasonable person standard is a legal fiction used
mostly in the common law in which a hypothetical individual whose view of
things is consulted in decisions of law. It has been criticized and terms
"the reasonable old man" and compared with the "reasonable woman". The
question, "How would a reasonable person have acted under the
circumstances?" performs a critical role in legal analysis in areas such as
negligence and contract law. The basic rationale behind the reasonable
person doctrine is that because the law exists to serve the public at large
it must deal with a member of the public that is rational, i.e., reasonable.
A reasonable persona may be one who has some foresight, plans his or her
acts, and is able to get along with others.

The reasonable man is not the average man: this is not a democratic measure.
To predict the appropriate sense of responsibility and other standards of
the reasonable man, "what is reasonable" has to be appropriate to the issue.
What the "average man" thinks or might do is irrelevant to a case concerning
medicine, for example. But the reasonable man is informed, capable, aware of
the law, and fair-minded. He might do something extraordinary under certain
circumstances, but whatever he does or thinks is always reasonable.

A related notion, used in common law contract law, is that of a reasonable
bystander or reasonable third party. It is also known as the objective
theory of contract formation and it is distinguished from the subjective
theory of contract formation that is accepted in most civil law
jurisdictions. Sometimes, particularly in the context of verbal contracts,
the existence of a contract is disputed because one party declares that he
or she did not intend to be legally bound. Since it would be impractical for
the court to try to determine the truth of this statement, it uses the
following test instead: if the outward conduct of the parties would have
indicated to a reasonable bystander a serious intention to enter into an
agreement, then the contract is deemed legally binding. Another circumstance
where the reasonable bystander is used occurs when one party has
inadvertently misstated the terms of the contract, and the other party sues
to enforce those terms: if it would have been clear to a reasonable
bystander that a mistake had been made, then the contract is voidable by the
party who made the error; otherwise, the contract is binding.

In cases where professional opinions may be necessary the doctrine of the
reasonable professional has developed. Thus if a doctor misdiagnoses a
patient, the question is not, "Was that diagnosis wrong?" but rather, "Would
a professional acting under the same circumstances, have concluded that the
given diagnosis was reasonable?" Questions about the knowledge of a
professional in a particular discipline in a particular environment are
relevant here, "Is the reasonable professional an expert or a general
practitioner in this area?

The reasonable man standard has been criticized as being sexist by various
feminist legal theorists which has lead to the adoption of the reasonable
person nomenclature. However, the rejoinder has been that just by a change
in name we will not see a change the reality; the development of the
reasonable person standard has been through a judiciary dominated by men,
and elderly men who are all lawyers. Advocates of the reasonable man
standard defend it because of its objective quality, i.e. the reasonable man
steps back from the circumstances and examines the objective characteristics
of the situation and performs a balancing test: Is the transaction cost of
proposed conduct worth it in the hypothetical situation? Critics would say
that any effort that prevents the negligent loss of life or limb is worth
it, rather than entering into an economic calculus of loss when human life
is concerned.