1. A hypothetical person used as a legal standard, esp. to determine whether someone acted with negligence; specif., a person who exercises the degree of attention, knowledge, intelligence, and judgment that society requires of its members for the protection of their own and of others’ interests. • The reasonable person acts sensibly, does things without serious delay, and takes proper but not excessive precautions.
— Also termed reasonable man; prudent person; ordinarily prudent person; reasonably prudent person; highly prudent person. See reasonable care under CARE. [Cases: Insurance 1818; Negligence 233. C.J.S. Negligence §§ 34, 118–121, 125–127, 130–131, 133.]
“The reasonable man connotes a person whose notions and standards of behaviour and responsibility correspond with those generally obtained among ordinary people in our society at the present time, who seldom allows his emotions to overbear his reason and whose habits are moderate and whose disposition is equable. He is not necessarily the same as the average man — a term which implies an amalgamation of counter-balancing extremes.” R.F.V. Heuston, Salmond on the Law of Torts 56 (17th ed. 1977).
2. Archaic. A human being.“In the antique phraseology which has been repeated since the time of Lord Coke the actus reus of murder (and therefore of any criminal homicide) was declared to be unlawfully killing a reasonable person who is in being and under the King’s peace, the death following within a year and a day. In this sentence the word ‘reasonable’ does not mean ‘sane’, but ‘human’. In criminal law, a lunatic is a persona for all purposes of protection, even when not so treated for the assessment of liability.” J.W. Cecil Turner, Kenny’s Outlines of Criminal Law 102 (16th ed. 1952).
