Negligence per se is the legal doctrine whereby certain acts are considered intrinsically negligent, with no requirement to prove the negligence was known or intended. As a typical example, suppose a contractor violated a building code when constructing a house; the house collapses and somebody is injured. The violation of the building code establishes negligence per se and the contractor will have to pay civil damages to the injured party as long as the homeowner is able to show that the contractor's breach of the code was the proximate cause of the home collapsing.