Torts

What is tort law?

Tort law is fairly simple to understand, when someone does something wrong and either hurts you or damages your property that person has to pay for what they have done. When I say pay I mean it financially, not in some physical way.

The however the simple fact that someone injures you or damages property does not mean they have committed a tort and have to pay for the damages. A person has to pay for the damages only if it was their fault. Some accidents are truly accidents. They are unavoidable. No one is at fault for what happened. When that happens each party involved is responsible for the cost of their own injuries or damage.

A person is responsible for your losses only if their conduct is of a "tortious" nature. The three types of Tort conduct are negligence, intentional misconduct, and strict liability.

How a reasonable person would have acted in a similar situation is usually up to the jury to decide based on all the facts presented at trial. The standard of care is often determined by simple common sense.

The classic case it is often cited to students is of a man walking down the street with a piano falls out of a window above a store seriously injuring him. The injured man cannot prove how the piano fell out of the window. The owner of the shop will not admitted any fault in the piano falling out of the window. Because of this type of incident will not occur on its own without someone being negligent and the store owner who has the ability to figure out why the accident happened, it is up to the store owner to prove that he was not at fault for the person's injuries. Without this role the store owner would be able to avoid responsibility simply by remaining silent and pretending to be ignorant about the cause of the accident.

This is called the doctrine of "res ipsa loquitur". It literally means the thing speaks for itself. It only applies when the accused has exclusive control of the item that hurts you and you did not contribute in any way to the accident and the accident would not have happened unless someone was negligent.