Originally Posted by vendorz
Uhhh, law student... now you might wanna go look up the law, which appears to require recklessness, not negligence.
That was the standard for recklessness.
EDIT: Actually, I'm not quite being accurate. That's the standard for "wanton and willful conduct," which is the element of recklessness that Julia Rietz says she was having trouble proving.
Originally Posted by vendorz
Yup. A dictionary is a neat tool... and often a court will look to dictionaries as useful tools in the court's effort to define words. Courts often find dictionaries particularly useful when the legislature has not expressly defined a word for the purposes of the law in which the word is used.
Matter of fact, when I looked up the Illinois law that describes the crime of reckless homicide, I prolly should have taken the additional time to look for a statutory definition of "reckless"... but I didn't.
But I *did* look it up. Get it?
EDIT: And another clarification: The case I used for "wanton and willfull conduct" was derived from research into the common law, rather than statutory, definitions of recklessness.
It's still the law in Illinois.