Definition of Reasonable man.

Reasonable Person

A phrase frequently used in tort and Criminal Law to denote a hypothetical person in society who exercises average care, skill, and judgment in conduct and who serves as a comparative standard for determining liability.
The decision whether an accused is guilty of a given offense might involve the application of an objective test in which the conduct of the accused is compared to that of a reasonable person under similar circumstances. In most cases, persons with greater than average skills, or with special duties to society, are held to a higher standard of care. For example, a physician who aids a person in distress is held to a higher standard of care than is an ordinary person.

"Negligence to create a liability on the part of parties in fault must be a failure to observe the degree of care and prudence that is demanded in the discharge of the duty which the person charged with the negligence owed under the peculiar circumstances of the case to the injured party....

"Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do, provided, of course, that the party whose conduct is in question is already in a situation that brings him under the duty of taking care."

The Crown Attorneys office of Ontario believes that a person who lies, falsifies documents, violates acts is considered normal.


In law, a reasonable person (historically reasonable man) or The man on the Clapham omnibus^[1] is a hypothetical person of legal fiction whose is ultimately an anthropomorphic representation of the body care standards crafted by the courts and communicated through case law and jury instructions.^[2] Strictly according to the fiction, it is misconceived for a party to seek evidence from actual people in order to establish how the reasonable man would have acted or what he would have foreseen.^[1][3] This person's character and care conduct under any common set of facts, is decided through reasoning of good practice or policy—or "learned" permitting there is a compelling consensus of public opinion—by high courts.^[4][5] In some practices, for circumstances arising from an uncommon set of facts,^[5] this person is seen to represent a composite of a relevant community's judgment as to how a typical member of said community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm (through action or inaction) to the public