What is tort law?

The three families of torts

Almost every claim you will meet falls into one of three groups, and the group decides what has to be proved:

• Negligence — the largest by far. Someone owed a duty of reasonable care, fell short of it, and the shortfall caused measurable harm. Car crashes, slip-and-falls, most medical cases.
• Intentional torts — the act was deliberate: battery, assault, false imprisonment, defamation, trespass. Intent to act is enough; intent to injure is not required.
• Strict liability — fault is not part of the question. Defective products, abnormally dangerous activities and, in many states, dog bites are judged by what happened, not by how careful the defendant was.

What a tort claim has to show

In a negligence case the four elements are duty, breach, causation and damages. All four must hold. A driver may have been plainly careless, but if you walked away unhurt there is nothing to compensate; an injury may be severe, but if nobody breached a duty there is no claim.

What a win is worth

Damages usually split into economic losses that can be added up — medical bills, lost earnings, repairs — and non-economic losses such as pain and loss of enjoyment. Punitive damages exist but are reserved for conduct a court calls reckless or malicious, and many states cap them.

Where state law changes the answer

Two rules differ enough to change the outcome of the same accident. The first is how shared blame is handled: most states reduce the award by your percentage of fault, some bar recovery once you pass 50 or 51 per cent, and a handful — Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia — still apply contributory negligence, where any fault at all can end the claim. The second is the filing deadline, which runs from one to six years depending on the state and the type of harm.