"Negligence" is the lack of ordinary care and diligence required by the circumstances. Ordinary care or diligence means such care as a person of ordinary prudence usually exercises about one's own affairs of ordinary importance.

Negligence involves a lack of such concern for the probable consequences of an act or failure to act as a person of ordinary prudence would have had in conducting one's own affairs. It is the lack of such care as persons of common sense and ordinary prudence usually exercise under the same or similar circumstances. Negligence is a relative term. Whether a certain act or failure to act is negligence depends upon the facts and circumstances of each particular case.

The duty to use care is based upon knowledge of danger. The care that a person must exercise in a particular situation is in proportion to the degree of danger of injury to oneself or to others in the act to be performed. The care necessary to constitute the ordinary care required by a person upon any particular occasion is measured by reference to the circumstances of danger known to one at the time or which the person should reasonably have foreseen. The greater the danger, the greater is the care required.

A person is presumed to have performed one's duty and to have exercised ordinary care, unless the contrary is shown by the greater weight of the evidence. The mere fact that a mishap occurred, considered alone, is not in itself evidence of negligence on the part of any of the people involved. You have no right to assume that the mishap was caused by negligence or other fault of anyone.

[If the standard of care required in any given situation is prescribed by the laws of this state, a failure to observe that standard is evidence of negligence.]