A tort 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. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable by the state. While criminal law aims to punish individuals who commit crimes, tort law aims to compensate individuals who suffer harm as a result of the actions of others. Some wrongful acts, such as assault and battery, can result in both a civil lawsuit and a criminal prosecution in countries where the civil and criminal legal systems are separate. Tort law may also be contrasted with contract law, which provides civil remedies after breach of a duty that arises from a contract. Obligations in both tort and criminal law are more fundamental and are imposed regardless of whether the parties have a contract.
Workers' compensation or workers' comp is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee's right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence. The trade-off between assured, limited coverage and lack of recourse outside the worker compensation system is known as "the compensation bargain.” One of the problems that the compensation bargain solved is the problem of employers becoming insolvent as a result of high damage awards. The system of collective liability was created to prevent that and thus to ensure security of compensation to the workers.
Respondeat superior is a doctrine that a party is responsible for acts of their agents. For example, in the United States, there are circumstances when an employer is liable for acts of employees performed within the course of their employment. This rule is also called the master-servant rule, recognized in both common law and civil law jurisdictions.
The system of Tort law in Australia is broadly similar to that in other common law countries. However, some divergences in approach have occurred as its independent legal system has developed.
Vicarious liability is a form of a strict, secondary liability that arises under the common law doctrine of agency, respondeat superior, the responsibility of the superior for the acts of their subordinate or, in a broader sense, the responsibility of any third party that had the "right, ability or duty to control" the activities of a violator. It can be distinguished from contributory liability, another form of secondary liability, which is rooted in the tort theory of enterprise liability because, unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. The law has developed the view that some relationships by their nature require the person who engages others to accept responsibility for the wrongdoing of those others. The most important such relationship for practical purposes is that of employer and employee.
English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil law, rather than criminal law, that usually requires a payment of money to make up for damage that is caused. Alongside contracts and unjust enrichment, tort law is usually seen as forming one of the three main pillars of the law of obligations.
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) is the workplace compensation board for provincially regulated workplaces in Ontario. As an agency of the Ontario government, the WSIB operates "at arm's length" from the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development and is solely funded by employer premiums, administration fees, and investment revenue. The WSIB is one of the largest compensation boards in North America and is primarily responsible for administering and enforcing the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Act (WSIA).
The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom relating to labour relations, which together with the Employers and Workmen Act 1875, fully decriminalised the work of trade unions. Based on an extension of the conclusions of the Cockburn Commission, it was introduced by a Conservative government under Benjamin Disraeli.
The Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 45 U.S.C. § 51 et seq. (1908), is a United States federal law that protects and compensates railroaders injured on the job.
The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba (WCB) is an agency of the Government of Manitoba that provides a system for workplace injury and disability insurance for workers and employers of Manitoba, paid for by employers.
Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services Ltd [2002] UKHL 22 is a leading case on causation in English tort law. It concerned malignant mesothelioma, a deadly disease caused by breathing asbestos fibres. The House of Lords approved the test of "materially increasing risk" of harm, as a deviation in some circumstances from the ordinary "balance of probabilities" test under the "but for" standard.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to tort law in common law jurisdictions:
The Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which deals with the right of working people for compensation for personal injury. The Act expanded the scheme created by the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897.
The Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 was a British law in operation from 1897 to 1946. Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Unionist party and in coalition with the Conservatives, designed a plan that was enacted under the Salisbury government in 1897. The Act was a key domestic achievement. It served its social purpose at no cost to the government, since employers were required to cover medical costs of injuries on the job. It replaced the Employers' Liability Act 1880, which gave the injured worker the right to sue the employer but put the burden of proof on the employee. After 1897, injured employees had only to show that they had been injured on the job. The Act was modelled on German law, where roughly the same rights were awarded to workers in their 1884 law. However, the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 did not require any form of risk pooling, such as insurance, on the part of the employers. As pointed out in the International Labour Organization 1935 "Report on Social Insurance", compulsory insurance was only introduced in 1934, and only for coal miners at first. The Act was replaced by an expanded scheme under the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906, whereby insurance became mandatory on the part of the employers, thus introducing the first social insurance scheme into the British case.
Albro v. The Agawam Canal Co., 6 Cush. 75, was a case in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that contributed to the "fellow servant rule".
Devlin v. Smith, 89 N.Y. 470 (1882) was a seminal case decided by the New York Court of Appeals in the area of product liability law.
The Law Reform Act 1945 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, which allows a judge to apportion liability for compensatory damages as he feels to be "just and equitable" between a tortfeasor and an injured person who was partly to blame. Section 1(1) of the Act provides:
"Where any person suffers damage as the result partly of his own fault and partly of the fault of any other person(s), a claim in respect of that damage will not be defeated by reason of the fault of the person suffering the damage, but the damages recoverable in respect thereof shall be reduced to such extent as the court thinks just and equitable having regard to the claimant's share in the responsibility for the damage."
The Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia, operating as WorkSafeBC, is a statutory agency that came into existence in 1917, after the provincial legislature put into force legislation passed in 1902. This legislation is known as the Workers Compensation Act.
Marine Services International Ltd v Ryan Estate, 2013 SCC 44 is a leading case of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning the coexistence of Canadian maritime law with provincial jurisdiction over property and civil rights, and it marks a further restriction upon the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity in Canadian constitutional jurisprudence.
Workers' compensation in the United States is a primarily state-based system of workers' compensation.
