Duty of care

Duty of care is a common-law concept used to decide whether a defendant owed the claimant a legal obligation of reasonable care. It is central to negligence claims and depends on factors such as foreseeability, proximity, assumption of responsibility, statutory purposes and policy limits. Swiss law does not generally use one overarching duty-of-care test in the same way. Similar questions arise under unlawfulness, breach of protective norms, contractual or pre-contractual duties, professional standards and general duties not to create or maintain danger. The concept remains useful in comparative analysis, especially for medical, construction, financial, product and traffic situations. The existence and scope of the duty determine what precautions were legally required before harm occurred.