The Hunter, the Elephant and Tort Law

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Recommended: Introduction to negligence

Decisions, decisions, our lives are made up of them. From deciding to pay for a passing a red light ticket to deciding to stop at a yellow light for once. We can attest that good or bad, there will always be corresponding consequences for our actions. In our modern society the hunter’s acts could be considered negligence. In the story “The Hunter and The Elephant,” the hunter’s negligence led him to experience a destruction of everything that he had. According to Business Law Today in order for someone to be considered negligent four requirements need to be satisfied: duty, breach, causation, and damages (Leroy 115-118).
First, the defending party must owe a duty of care to the other party. It is evident that our hunter has a family at his home in America to which the hunter must care and is ultimately responsible for. That being said, this establishes that there is a duty of care literally to his family or, to use business context, there is a duty to his client or even his partners. The hunter’s ambition and desire lead him to recklessly pursue an elephant which can be interpreted as a foreign desire to our hunter’s native home and interpret the elephant’s size as the hunter’s desire for large quantities since he completely walked passed a purple cow and trampled black orchids. The story mentions that the hunter is already the owner of many animals which for our purposes we can consider property or assets to his trade (Thurber 27). It is common place in the business world that rationale must be used when making decisions as opposed to emotion and desire in order to avoid being negligent.
Secondly the established duty of care must be breached by the defendants’ actions. During his quest the hunter "would trample black orchids" ...

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... left his board" (Thurber 27). Everything he owned was left in ruins. These damages were too extreme for even his family to bear.
Ultimately, we can factually conclude that the hunter is guilty of negligence. He owed a duty of care to himself and to his family. He breached this duty by pursuing wrongful actions. His actions were the direct and only cause for the damages, and lastly the damages sustained were recognizable. Therefore you should always be sure to maintain your duty of care to avoid the ripple effect that leads to negligence.

Works Cited

Miller, Roger LeRoy., and Gaylord A. Jentz. "Chapter 4 Torts and Cyber Torts." Business Law Today: The Essentials. Mason, OH: South-Western, 2013. 115-118. Print.

Thurber, James. "The Hunter and the Elephant." Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1997. 27. Print.

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