Tort Law

Tort law covers the rules that decide who pays when one person’s actions cause harm to another, outside of any criminal charge or written contract. It touches car accidents, injuries on someone’s property, defective products, and countless everyday disputes where one party claims another’s conduct caused real damage. The goal is compensation for the injured person, not punishment, though the two sometimes overlap.

How fault is assigned often decides the outcome as much as the injury itself. Most cases turn on negligence, meaning someone failed to act with reasonable care, but real accidents rarely involve just one careless party. States have developed different rules for splitting responsibility and calculating payouts when both sides share blame, which you can see explored in When Accidents Happen: Who Pays When Everyone’s at Fault?

Not every claim requires proof of carelessness. Some legal theories hold a person or company responsible regardless of how careful they were, while others treat the violation of a safety law as automatic proof of fault. The distinctions between these approaches, and when each applies, are laid out in Strict Liability vs. Negligence Per Se: Legal Responsibility Without a Law Degree.

Torts also differ from broken promises. A dispute over a contract that fell through follows a different set of rules than a claim over an injury, and knowing which category a problem fits into shapes what remedies are available, a distinction covered in Tort Law vs Contract Law: Your Rights and Responsibilities Guide. For a broader look at the categories of civil wrongs themselves, see Understanding Negligence and Intentional Torts.