TORT LAW

Tort Law

Tort Law

Introduction

A tort is when someone (a person, group, or company) or something causes another person a personal injury or their property to be damaged. Basically, torts are civil wrongs and are legally the grounds for a lawsuit. These can be willful in nature or due to negligence. Torts are in place to make the person causing the injury or damage to be held responsible (accountable) for these actions, injuries or damages. Personal injury can be a wide variety of injuries from a minor abrasion due to a fall up to and including death. The tort laws in the US do have a statute of limitations.

Discussion

The two basic types of torts are compensatory and punitive. Compensatory allows the personally injured to recover actual costs of the wrong doing. These can include medical bills, property damage cost of repair, and even loss of pay. Punitive damages are not intended to compensate the injured for losses, but as a punishment for the wrong doer and to deter them from committing this act again, or prevent the same negligence in the future (Sugarman, 1995). In the case of Stuart pendlebury's I think Compensatory allows occurred.

The first element of negligence under Tort Law is the existence of a legal duty of care. This is, essentially, the relationship between the defendant and the claimant by which there is an obligation upon the defendant to take proper care to avoid causing injury to the claimant. In the case of Stuart pendlebury's four elements of a negligence action exist for a plaintiff to win a negligence action are duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages/injury. The plaintiff must prove all of these elements in order to be successful in a negligence claim (Markesinis, 1999).

Duty can be looked at almost like the Golden Rule. Everyone has a general duty to carry out a reasonable care toward other people and their property. Duty is the primary control device which allows the courts to keep liability for negligence within what they regard as acceptable limits and the controversies which have centred around the criteria for the existence of a duty reflect differences of opinion as to the proper ambit of liability for negligence (Leebron, 1991). Today, the existence of a duty of care is established by using the Caparo v Dickman test (an extension of the original Wilberforce two-stage test in Anns v Merton ) by which Lord Bridge formulated three stages which must be satisfied in order for a duty of care to exist. These are; the damage to claimant is foreseeable, there must be a relationship of proximity or neighbourhood between the claimant and the defendant and the court considers it fair, just and reasonable that the law should impose a duty. The last stage of this test in particular, gives the judges a certain amount of authority as to what they may consider as fair, just and reasonable. They therefore have the power to control duty as to what they think is ...