In a legal and general sense, negligence is defined as the failure to exercise the level of care that a reasonably prudent person would have exercised in similar circumstances. It typically involves four key elements: a duty of care owed to another person, a breach of that duty, causation (the breach directly caused an event), and actual damages or injury. Examples of negligence include a driver failing to stop at a red light and hitting a pedestrian, or a store owner failing to clean up a liquid spill on a floor within a reasonable timeframe, leading to a "slip and fall" accident. In the context of professional services, it is often referred to as malpractice. Negligence does not require an intent to cause harm; rather, it focuses on the "omission" of a required action or the "commission" of an unsafe act. To prove negligence, one must demonstrate that the harm was a "foreseeable" consequence of the defendant's lack of care, making it a cornerstone of tort law and personal liability.