At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at law, the loss must involve damage to property, or mental or physical injury; pure economic loss is rarely recognised for the award of damages.
A tort, in common law jurisdiction, is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. It can include intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, financial losses, injuries, invasion of privacy, and many other things. The word 'tort' stems from Old French via the Norman Conquest and Latin via the Roman Empire.
An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers." A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court. Counterinjunctions are injunctions that stop or reverse the enforcement of another injunction.
Civil procedure is the body of law that sets out the rules and standards that courts follow when adjudicating civil lawsuits. These rules govern how a lawsuit or case may be commenced; what kind of service of process is required; the types of pleadings or statements of case, motions or applications, and orders allowed in civil cases; the timing and manner of depositions and discovery or disclosure; the conduct of trials; the process for judgment; the process for post-trial procedures; various available remedies; and how the courts and clerks must function.
Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally interfered with another person's lawful possession of a chattel. The interference can be any physical contact with the chattel in a quantifiable way, or any dispossession of the chattel. As opposed to the greater wrong of conversion, trespass to chattels is argued to be actionable per se.
Nuisance is a common law tort. It means that which causes offence, annoyance, trouble or injury. A nuisance can be either public or private. A public nuisance was defined by English scholar Sir J. F. Stephen as,
"an act not warranted by law, or an omission to discharge a legal duty, which act or omission obstructs or causes inconvenience or damage to the public in the exercise of rights common to all Her Majesty's subjects".
A legal remedy, also referred to as judicial relief or a judicial remedy, is the means with which a court of law, usually in the exercise of civil law jurisdiction, enforces a right, imposes a penalty, or makes another court order to impose its will in order to compensate for the harm of a wrongful act inflicted upon an individual.
Waste is a term used in property law to describe a cause of action that can be brought in court to address a change in condition of real property brought about by a current tenant that damages or destroys the value of that property. A lawsuit for waste can be brought against a life tenant or lessee of a leasehold estate, either by a current landlord or by the owner of a vested future interest. The holder of an executory interest, however, has no standing to enforce an action for waste, since his future interest is not vested. There are several different kinds of waste under the law.
In tort common law, the defense of necessity gives the state or an individual a privilege to take or use the property of another. A defendant typically invokes the defense of necessity only against the intentional torts of trespass to chattels, trespass to land, or conversion. The Latin phrase from common law is necessitas inducit privilegium quod jura privata. A court will grant this privilege to a trespasser when the risk of harm to an individual or society is apparently and reasonably greater than the harm to the property. Unlike the privilege of self-defense, those who are harmed by individuals invoking the necessity privilege are usually free from any wrongdoing. Generally, an individual invoking this privilege is obligated to pay any actual damages caused in the use of the property but not punitive or nominal damages.
An adequate remedy or adequate remedy at law is part of a legal remedy which the court deems satisfactory, without recourse to an equitable remedy. This consideration expresses to the court whether money should be awarded or a court order should be decreed.. Adequate remedy at law refers to the sufficient compensation for the loss or damages caused by the defendant with a proper monetary award. The court must grant the adequacy of remedy that will lead to a "meaningful hearing". Whether legal damages or equitable relief are requested depends largely on,whether or not the remedy can be valued. Both two elements, compensation and the meaningfulness of hearing, provide a proper way to have an adequate remedy. The word "meaningfulness" of hearing in the law process is the assumption that the defendant compensated must be meaningful for the injured party where the defendant made a fully covered compensation for all the losses. Hence, the hearing in which cannot give any right amount of compensation award or settlement is not "meaningful", and the unavailability of the compensation will lead to an inadequate remedy. The adequate remedy at law is the legal remedies by meaning it is satisfactory compensation by way of monetary damages without granting equitable remedies.
Miller v Jackson [1977] QB 966 is a famous Court of Appeal of England and Wales case in the torts of negligence and nuisance. The court considered whether the defendant - the chairman of a local cricket club, on behalf of its members - was liable in nuisance or negligence when cricket balls were hit over the boundary and onto the property of their neighbours, Mr and Mrs Miller, the plaintiffs.
Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset was the first file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States brought by major record labels to be tried before a jury. The defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was found liable to the plaintiff record company for making 24 songs available to the public for free on the Kazaa file sharing service and ordered to pay $220,000.
Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, 30 Cal. 4th 1342 (2003), is a decision of the California Supreme Court, authored by Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar. In Hamidi the California Supreme Court held that a former Intel Corporation employee's e-mails to current Intel employees, despite requests by Intel to stop sending messages, did not constitute trespass of Intel's e-mail system.
Thomas Haslem v. William A. Lockwood, Connecticut, (1871) is an important United States case in property, tort, conversion, trover and nuisance law.
Attorney General v Blake[2000] UKHL 45, [2001] 1 AC 268 is a leading English contract law case on damages for breach of contract. It established that in some circumstances, where ordinary remedies are inadequate, restitutionary damages may be awarded.
Nuisance in English law is an area of tort law broadly divided into two torts; private nuisance, where the actions of the defendant are "causing a substantial and unreasonable interference with a [claimant]'s land or his/her use or enjoyment of that land", and public nuisance, where the defendant's actions "materially affects the reasonable comfort and convenience of life of a class of Her Majesty's subjects"; public nuisance is also a crime. Both torts have been present from the time of Henry III, being affected by a variety of philosophical shifts through the years which saw them become first looser and then far more stringent and less protecting of an individual's rights. Each tort requires the claimant to prove that the defendant's actions caused interference, which was unreasonable, and in some situations the intention of the defendant may also be taken into account. A significant difference is that private nuisance does not allow a claimant to claim for any personal injury suffered, while public nuisance does.
American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.
Wrotham Park Estate Co Ltd v Parkside Homes Ltd [1974] 1 WLR 798 is an English land law and English contract law case, concerning the measure and availability of damages for breach of negative covenant in circumstances where the court has confirmed a covenant is legally enforceable and refused as it may find, as unconscionable, to issue an order for specific performance or an injunction.
Tort law in India is a relatively new common law development supplemented by codifying statutes including statutes governing damages. While India generally follows the UK approach, there are certain differences which may indicate judicial activism, hence creating controversy. Tort is breach of some duty independent of contract which has caused damage to the plaintiff giving rise to civil cause of action and for which remedy is available. If there is no remedy it cannot be called a tort because the essence of tort is to give remedy to the person who has suffered injury.
A patent holder in Canada has the exclusive right, privilege and liberty to making, constructing, using and selling the invention for the term of the patent, from the time the patent is granted. Any person who does any of these acts in relation to an invention without permission of the patent owner is liable for patent infringement.
