Definition
In law, care means the degree of attention, caution, and diligence that a person is expected to exercise in a given situation. It is the conceptual opposite of negligence: where negligence describes a failure to act with sufficient care, the legal standard of care defines what "sufficient" means.
The term operates primarily in two legal contexts:
1. Tort and negligence law. Care functions as the benchmark against which conduct is measured. A person who fails to exercise the required degree of care may be liable for resulting harm. The standard varies with circumstances — the care owed by a surgeon differs from that owed by a casual bystander — but the central question is always the same: did the actor behave as a reasonably prudent person would under the same or similar conditions?
2. Bailment and property law. Care describes the custodial duty owed by a person who holds property belonging to another. The required degree of care depends on who benefits from the arrangement.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Close attention, concern, or responsibility; worry; maintenance and upkeep; the treatment of those in need, especially as a profession; the state of being cared for by others.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A burdensome sense of responsibility; trouble caused by onerous duties; anxiety; concern; solicitude. Also, charge, oversight, or management, implying responsibility for safety and prosperity.
The common meaning of care is emotional and relational — it connotes concern, affection, or worry. The legal meaning is structural and objective: it defines a standard of conduct that is measured externally, not by the actor's subjective feelings. A person can be deeply concerned about another yet still fall below the legal standard of care, and conversely, a dispassionate professional may fully satisfy it. Researchers working with older sources should note that Webster's sense of "charge and oversight implying responsibility for safety and prosperity" is actually the closest common-language approximation to the legal usage in the bailment context.
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Core Elements
The three traditional degrees of care, drawn from common law and preserved in most American jurisdictions, correspond inversely to the three degrees of negligence:
Slight care: The minimal attention that even a careless person might exercise. The correlative failure is gross negligence. Traditionally associated with gratuitous bailments where the bailee receives no benefit — the bailee is held only to this low standard.
Ordinary care (also: reasonable care, due care): The attention and caution that a person of ordinary prudence exercises in their own affairs under similar circumstances. This is by far the most common legal standard. The correlative failure is ordinary negligence. The "reasonable person" standard in modern tort law is a refinement and elaboration of this concept.
Great care (also: utmost care, extraordinary care): The highest degree of caution and attentiveness. The correlative failure is slight negligence. Traditionally imposed on common carriers and in bailments where the bailee receives the sole benefit.
Note: The tripartite degree structure, though still referenced, has been substantially displaced in modern tort law. Most jurisdictions now apply a unitary reasonable person standard, treating degrees of care as factors relevant to what reasonableness requires rather than as formal legal categories.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Due care: Synonymous in most contexts with ordinary or reasonable care. The phrase is especially common in older case law and statutory language.
Reasonable care: The modern dominant formulation. Focuses on what a hypothetical reasonable person would do, adjusted for the specific circumstances of the case.
Utmost care / Highest degree of care: Applied to common carriers in many jurisdictions. Requires extraordinary vigilance beyond ordinary prudence.
Duty of care: The legal obligation to exercise care toward a particular person or class of persons. Distinct from the standard of care: duty establishes that a legal obligation exists; standard defines what that obligation requires.
Standard of care (professional): In professional liability (medical, legal, architectural, etc.), the standard is defined by what a competent member of the profession would do — not by what a general layperson would do.
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Why It Matters in Research
The tripartite degree structure is a research trap. Older cases and treatises frequently discuss slight, ordinary, and great care as distinct legal categories with different consequences. Modern cases generally do not use this framework. When reading pre-twentieth century opinions, especially in bailment, carrier, or property contexts, care should be understood within its historical framework. Mapping that language directly onto modern reasonable care doctrine will often mislead.
Jurisdictional variation in the degree structure is significant. Some states formally retain the tripartite system by statute or in their common carrier jurisprudence; others have abandoned it entirely. When researching historical negligence standards, verify whether the jurisdiction in question ever formally adopted or rejected the traditional degree framework.
The relationship between care and negligence is definitional, not merely conceptual. Understanding care in any given source requires understanding what that source treats as negligence. Researchers moving between Bouvier, Black's, and Anderson should note that these dictionaries are not perfectly synchronized on the degree structure — Bouvier's references to "utmost care," "extraordinary care," and "especial care" suggest a more granular practice-level vocabulary than the clean three-tier schema Black's presents.
The term care also appears heavily in family law and public benefits contexts — child care, foster care, duty of care to a ward — where it carries a relational and custodial meaning rather than a tort standard meaning. These uses should not be conflated.
Tax researchers should note that "care" in the Child and Dependent Care Credit context is a statutory term with its own definitional requirements, unrelated to the tort standard of care.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) offers the clearest systematic treatment, organizing care into the three-degree framework and explicitly linking each degree of care to its correlative degree of negligence. This is the most useful historical entry for researchers working in negligence or bailment contexts.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary approaches care from a more practical angle, referencing actual reported decisions for each gradation of care — "utmost care," "extraordinary care," "great care," "especial care," "proper and reasonable care," "due care" — rather than offering a clean theoretical taxonomy. This reflects nineteenth-century practice, in which courts used varied language that did not always track the three-tier schema.
Burrill's and Rapalje & Lawrence do not address care in the tort or negligence sense at all; their entries under this headword concern the Latin pleading phrase et hoc paratus est verificare ("and this he is ready to verify"), which is unrelated to the substantive legal concept. Researchers should not expect substantive treatment of care as a standard of conduct from these sources.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not appear to offer a direct entry on care as a standard of conduct. The fragment provided concerns marine insurance and enemy captures, suggesting its entry under this headword addresses different subject matter.
The historical sources collectively fail to address the modern reasonable person standard, which developed primarily through twentieth-century case law and the Restatement framework. Researchers relying solely on the historical dictionaries will encounter a degree-based framework that is more formal, more categorical, and more directly tied to bailment classifications than modern doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
The formal tripartite degree-of-care structure (slight, ordinary, great) persists in some states' common carrier statutes and in older case law that has not been formally overruled, but most American jurisdictions have moved to a unitary reasonable care standard for general negligence. In professional liability contexts, the relevant standard of care is defined by the profession and locality, which can vary significantly.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
torts_5: Negligence — Standard of Care for Children (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
tax_12: Child and Dependent Care Credit (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia)
tax_57: Exclusions — Dependent Care Assistance (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia)
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