Breaking stuff while doing someone a favor
<p>Am I less responsible/liable for stuff that I break while doing someone a favor, and neither doing anything intentional to cause the break nor being negligent?</p>

<p>For example:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>someone on the street asks you to take a picture of them with their phone. You drop the phone and cause a visible damage.</p></li>
<li><p>some friend asks you to drive his car since he's intoxicated. You haven't drunk and his home is near yours. In the way home you crash the car by being slightly inattentive and wrongly calculating the braking distance.</p></li>
</ul>

<h2>In general, no</h2>

<p>In the absence of a contract detailing your obligations (such as you get when you hire a car) the relevant law is that of <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">negligence</a>. To be responsible for damage you must have:</p>

<ol>
<li>had a duty to the plaintiff,</li>
<li>breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person),</li>
<li>the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of the harm to the plaintiff, and</li>
<li>the plaintiff was, in fact, harmed or damaged.</li>
</ol>

<p>The duty arises from having the item in your care and control, failing to take reasonable care to avoid damage is a breach of that duty - you are liable no matter the reason the item was in your care and control.</p>

liability