TORT

TORT may be defined as a personal injury; or as “a civil action other than a breach of contract.”One who commits a tortious act is called a tortfeasor. The equivalent of tort in civil law jurisdictions is delict.

A person who suffers a tortious injury is entitled to receive “damages”, usually monetary compensation, from the person or people responsible or liable for those injuries. Tort law defines what is a legal injury and, therefore, whether a person may be held liable for an injury they have caused. Legal injuries are not limited to physical injuries. They may also include emotional, economic, or reputational injuries as well as violations of privacy, property, or constitutional rights.

Tort cases therefore comprise such varied topics as auto accidents, false imprisonment, defamation, product liability (for defective consumer products), copyright infringement, and environmental pollution (toxic torts), among many others.
In much of the common law world, the most prominent tort liability is negligence. If the injured party can prove that the person believed to have caused the injury acted negligently – that is, without taking reasonable care to avoid injuring others – tort law will allow compensation.However, tort law also recognizes intentional torts, where a person has intentionally acted in a way that harms another, and “strict liability” or quasi-tort, which allows recovery under certain circumstances without the need to demonstrate negligence.

TYPES OF TORTS :

NEGLIGENCE
Negligence is a tort which depends on the existence of a breaking of the duty of care owed by one person to another. One well-known case is Donoghue v Stevenson where Mrs. Donoghue consumed part of a drink containing a decomposed snail while in a public bar in Paisley, Scotland and claimed that it had made her ill. The snail had not been visible, as the bottle of beer in which it was contained was opaque. Neither the friend who bought the bottle for her, nor the shopkeeper who sold it, were aware of the snail’s presence. The manufacturer was Mr. Stevenson, whom Mrs. Donoghue sued for damages for negligence. She could not sue Mr. Stevenson for damages for breach of contract because there was no contract between them. The majority of the members of the House of Lords agreed (3:2 ratio) that Mrs. Donoghue had a valid claim, but disagreed as to why such a claim should exist. Lord MacMillan thought this should be treated as a new product liability case. Lord Atkin argued that the law should recognise a unifying principle that we owe a duty of reasonable care to our neighbors. He quoted the Bible in support of his argument, specifically the general principle that “thou shalt love thy neighbor.” Negligence is a breach of legal duty to take care resulting in damage to the plaintiff. This definition of negligence can be divided into four component parts that the plaintiff must prove to establish negligence. The legal burden of proving these elements falls upon the plaintiff. The elements in determining the liability for negligence are:
The plaintiff was owed a Duty of care
There was a Dereliction or breach of that duty
The tortfeasor Directly caused the injury.
The plaintiff suffered Damage as a result of that breach
The damage was not too remote; there was proximate cause.

The first element of negligence is the legal duty of care. This concerns the relationship between the defendant and the plaintiff, which must be such that there is an obligation upon the defendant to take proper care to avoid causing injury to the plaintiff in all the circumstances of the case. There are two ways in which a duty of care may be established:
the defendant and plaintiff are within one of the ‘special relationship’; or
outside of these relationships, according to the principles developed by case law.

There are a number of situations in which the courts recognise the existence of a duty of care. These usually arise as a result of some sort of special relationship between the parties. Examples include one road-user to another, employer to employee, manufacturer to consumer, doctor to patient and solicitor to client.

NUISANCE
Legally, the term “nuisance” is traditionally used in three ways: (1) to describe an activity or condition that is harmful or annoying to others (example- indecent conduct, a rubbish heap or a smoking chimney); (2) to describe the harm caused by the before-mentioned activity or condition (example- loud noises or objectionable odors); and (3) to describe a legal liability (responsibility) that arises from the combination of the two. The law of nuisance was created to stop such bothersome activities or conduct when they unreasonably interfered either with the rights of other private landowners (example- private nuisance) or with the rights of the general public (example-public nuisance).

The tort of nuisance allows a claimant (formerly plaintiff) to sue for most acts that interfere with their use and enjoyment of their land. A good example of this is in the case of Jones v Powell. A brewery made stinking vapors which wafted onto a neighbor’s property, damaging his papers. As he was a landowner, the neighbor sued in nuisance for this damage. But Whitelocke J, speaking for the Court of the King’s Bench, said that because the water supply was contaminated, it was better that the neighbor’s documents were risked. He said “it is better that they should be spoiled than that the common wealth stand in need of good liquor.” Nowadays, interfering with neighbors’ property is not looked upon so kindly. Nuisance deals with all kinds of things that spoil a landowner’s enjoyment of his property.

A subset of nuisance is known as the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher, where a dam burst into a coal mine shaft. So a dangerous escape of some hazard, including water, fire, or animals means strict liability in nuisance. This is subject only to a remoteness cap, familiar from negligence when the event is unusual and unpredictable. This was the case where chemicals from a factory seeped through a floor into the water table, contaminating East Anglia’s water reservoirs.

DEFAMATION
Defamation is tarnishing the reputation of someone; it has two varieties, slander and libel. Slander is spoken defamation and libel is printed or broadcast defamation. The two otherwise share the same features: making a factual assertion for which evidence does not exist. Defamation does not affect or hinder the voicing of opinions, but does occupy the same fields as rights to free speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Related to defamation in the U.S. are the actions for misappropriation of publicity, invasion of privacy, and disclosure. Abuse of process and malicious prosecution are often classified as dignitary torts as well.

INTENTIONAL TORTS
Intentional torts are any intentional acts that are reasonably foreseeable to cause harm to an individual, and that do so. Intentional torts have several subcategories, including torts against the person, including assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. Property torts involve any intentional interference with the property rights of the claimant (plaintiff). Those commonly recognized include trespass to land, trespass to chattels (personal property), and conversion.

ECONOMIC TORTS
Economic torts protect people from interference with their trade or business. The area includes the doctrine of restraint of trade and has largely been submerged in the twentieth century by statutory interventions on collective labour law and modern antitrust or competition law. The “absence of any unifying principle drawing together the different heads of economic tort liability has often been remarked upon.”

Through a recent development in common law, beginning with Hedley Byrne v Heller in 1964, a victim of negligent misstatement may recover damages for pure economic loss caused by detrimental reliance on the statement. Misrepresentation is a tort as confirmed by Bridge LJ in Howard Marine and Dredging Co. Ltd. v A Ogden & Sons

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRIME AND TORT

Being a civil injury, tort differs from crime in all respects in which a civil remedy differs from a criminal one. There are certain essential marks of difference between crime and tort they are:
Tort is an infringement or privation of private or civil rights belongigng to individuals, whereas crime is a breach of public rights and duties which affect the whole community.
In tort the wrong doer has to compensate the injured party whereas in crime, he is punished by the state in the interest of the society.
In tort the action is brought about by the injured party whereas in crime the proceedings are conducted in the name of the state.
In tort damages are paid for compensating the injured and in crime it is paid out of the fine which is paid as a part of punishment. Thus the primary purpose of awrding compensation in a criminal prosecution is punitive rather than compensatory. The damages in tort are unliquidated and in crime they are liquidated.