Chapter 6: Tort Law

Flashcards covering key vocabulary terms and definitions from Chapter 6, Tort Law.

Tort Law

A body of law designed to compensate those who have suffered a civil loss or injury due to another person’s wrongful act, typically involving a lawsuit for monetary damages or other relief.

Tort

A wrong arising from a breach of a legal duty, requiring the existence of a duty, its breach, and a causal relationship between the breach and resulting damages.

Compensatory Damages

Monetary damages awarded in tort actions to reimburse the plaintiff for actual losses incurred.

Special Damages

A type of compensatory damage for quantifiable losses, such as medical expenses, lost wages, and benefits.

General Damages

A type of compensatory damage for non-monetary losses, such as pain and suffering or harm to reputation, typically awarded only to individuals.

Punitive Damages

Monetary damages awarded in tort actions to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct, usually reserved for intentional torts or gross negligence.

Legislative Caps on Damages

State laws that may limit the amount of general and punitive damages that can be awarded, particularly in cases like medical malpractice.

Intentional Torts

Civil wrongs that result from the intentional violation of person or property, requiring both fault and intent on the part of the tortfeasor.

Unintentional Torts (Negligence)

Civil wrongs that result from the breach of a duty to act reasonably, involving fault without intent.

Tortfeasor

The person or entity committing a tort (a civil wrong).

Transferred Intent

A legal principle where the intent of a tortfeasor to harm one person is transferred to another person who is unintentionally harmed as well.

Assault

Any intentional and unexcused threat of immediate harmful or offensive contact that creates a reasonably believable threat, where no physical contact is necessary.

Battery

The completion of an assault, involving unexcused, harmful, or offensive physical contact intentionally performed by the defendant or a force set in motion by them.

False Imprisonment

The intentional confinement or restraint of another person’s activities without justification, which can occur through physical barriers, restraint, or threats of force.

Privilege to Detain

An exception granted to merchants in most states, allowing them to use reasonable force to detain a suspected shoplifter.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

An intentional act that constitutes extreme and outrageous conduct, exceeding the bounds of decency accepted by society, and resulting in severe emotional distress to another.

Defamation

Wrongfully hurting a person’s good reputation by making false statements of fact about them, with a duty imposed by law to refrain from such statements.

Slander

Defamation that is expressed orally.

Libel

Defamation that is expressed in print, media, or the internet.

Actual Malice

A requirement for public figures to prove in defamation cases, meaning the false statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.

Slander Per Se

Categories of oral defamatory statements for which no proof of special damages (actual economic loss) is necessary, such as those involving a loathsome disease, business improprieties, serious crime, or serious sexual misconduct.

Truth (Defense to Defamation)

Generally an absolute defense against a claim of defamation.

Privileged Speech (Defense to Defamation)

Statements made in certain contexts (e.g., by an attorney in court) that are immune from defamation claims.

Qualified Privilege (Defense to Defamation)

A conditional defense to defamation, such as an employer's evaluation of an employee, where statements are protected unless made with actual malice.

Invasion of Privacy

Common law recognition of four acts that improperly infringe on another's privacy: intrusion on affairs, false light, public disclosure of private facts, and appropriation of identity.

Appropriation of Identity

The use of another's name, likeness, or other identifying characteristic for commercial purposes without the owner's consent, qualifying as an invasion of privacy.

Fraudulent Misrepresentation (Fraud)

Intentional deceit, typically for personal gain, involving a misrepresentation of material fact, intent to induce reliance, justifiable reliance, damages, and a causal connection.

Puffery

Exaggerated or false praise, or 'seller's talk,' which is typically considered opinion and not actionable as fraudulent misrepresentation.

Trespass to Land

Occurs when a person, without permission, physically enters onto, above, or below another's land; causes anything to enter; or remains/permits anything to remain on the land.

Attractive Nuisance Doctrine

A doctrine under which property owners may be liable for injuries to children caused by objects on their property that attract children.

Negligence

An unintentional tort defined as the failure to live up to a required duty of care that a reasonable person would exercise in similar circumstances, where intent is not required, only the creation of a foreseeable risk of injury.

Elements of Negligence

To prove negligence, a plaintiff must show the defendant owed a duty of care, breached that duty, the breach caused injury, and the plaintiff suffered a legal injury (damages).

Duty of Care

The legal obligation a defendant owes to protect a plaintiff from foreseeable risks of injury that the defendant knew or should have known about.

Reasonable Person Standard

The legal standard used by courts (and juries) to determine whether a duty of care has been breached, asking how a hypothetical reasonable person would have acted in the same circumstances.

Professional Malpractice

The breach of a higher duty of care owed by professionals (e.g., doctors, lawyers, accountants) based on their special education, skill, or intelligence.

No Duty to Rescue

A general legal principle that a person is not legally obligated to rescue another in danger, unless a special relationship creates such a duty or if an attempt to rescue is made, then due care is required.

Causation (in Tort Law)

In negligence, the requirement that the tortfeasor's act must have directly led to the plaintiff's injuries, encompassing both causation in fact and proximate cause.

Causation in Fact

The 'but for' test used to determine if an injury occurred because of the defendant's act, meaning 'but for the defendant's act, the injury would not have occurred.'

Proximate Cause (Legal Cause)

An act is the proximate cause of injury when the causal connection between the act and injury is strong enough to impose liability, primarily determined by foreseeability.

Foreseeability (in Causation)

A key factor in proximate cause, where the consequences of an act are legally foreseeable if they are consequences that typically occur in the course of the event, and the injury sustained was foreseeable.

Legally Recognizable Injury

To recover damages in a tort case, the plaintiff must demonstrate that they suffered an injury that the law acknowledges and for which it provides remedies.

Good Samaritan Statutes

Laws designed to protect individuals (often physicians but sometimes non-physicians) who voluntarily provide aid to a person in an emergency situation from being sued for negligence.

Dram Shop Acts

State statutes that hold tavern owners, bartenders, or even social hosts liable for injuries caused by intoxicated persons to whom they served alcohol.

Negligence Per Se

Occurs when a defendant violates a statute (often a criminal statute) that sets out a standard of care, and that violation causes injury to a plaintiff who is a member of the class intended to be protected by the statute, which was designed to prevent the type of injury suffered.

Danger Invites Rescue Doctrine

A doctrine that holds a wrongdoer liable not only for injuries to the person placed in danger but also for injuries to an individual attempting to rescue that person from the dangerous situation.

Assumption of Risk

A defense to negligence where the plaintiff had adequate notice and understanding of the risks associated with an activity and knowingly and willingly engaged in that activity anyway, accepting responsibility for injuries within the scope of the understood risk.

Superseding Intervening Cause

An unforeseeable, intervening act that occurs after the defendant's act and breaks the causal relationship between the defendant's act and the plaintiff's injury, thereby relieving the defendant of liability.

Contributory Negligence

An older common law defense to negligence where, if the plaintiff in any way contributed to their own injury, they were entirely barred from recovery. Most states have replaced this with comparative negligence.

Comparative Negligence

A defense to negligence where the amount of damages a plaintiff can recover is reduced in proportion to the percentage of fault attributed to the plaintiff for their own injuries. If the plaintiff is more than 50% liable (in most states), they recover nothing.

Pure Comparative Negligence

A variation of comparative negligence where a plaintiff can recover damages even if their own fault is greater than that of the defendant, with the recovery simply reduced by their percentage of fault.