Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels, and trespass to land.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress is a common law tort that allows individuals to recover for severe emotional distress caused by another individual who intentionally or recklessly inflicted emotional distress by behaving in an "extreme and outrageous" way. Some courts and commentators have substituted mental for emotional, but the tort is the same.
Tort law in Australia is substantively similar to that of other common law jurisdictions, especially at a foundational level. This is due to the legal system of Australia having been derived from the UK, like most other common law nations around the globe.
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, 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.
In common law jurisdictions, a misrepresentation is a false or misleading statement of fact made during negotiations by one party to another, the statement then inducing that other party to enter into a contract. The misled party may normally rescind the contract, and sometimes may be awarded damages as well.
Economic torts, which are also called business torts, are torts that provide the common law rules on liability which arise out of business transactions such as interference with economic or business relationships and are likely to involve pure economic loss.
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio is a legal doctrine which states that a plaintiff will be unable to pursue legal relief and damages if it arises in connection with their own tortious act. Particularly relevant in the law of contract, tort and trusts, ex turpi causa is also known as the illegality defence, since a defendant may plead that even though, for instance, he broke a contract, conducted himself negligently or broke an equitable duty, nevertheless a claimant by reason of his own illegality cannot sue. The UK Supreme Court provided a thorough reconsideration of the doctrine in 2016 in Patel v Mirza.
In the English law of negligence, the acts of the claimant may give the defendant a defence to liability, whether in whole or part, if those acts unreasonably add to the loss.
Wilkinson v Downton[1897] EWHC 1 (QB), [1897] 2 QB 57 is an English tort law decision in which the Common Law first recognised the tort of intentional infliction of mental shock. At the time, this was not covered under the law of negligence.
Letang v Cooper[1964] EWCA Civ 5 is an English Court of Appeal judgment, by which it was decided that negligently caused personal injury cannot be recovered under the trespass to the person, but the tort of negligence must be tried instead.
Nettleship v Weston [1971] 2 QB 691 is an English Court of Appeal judgment dealing with the breach of duty in negligence claims. In this case the court had considered the question of the standard of care that should be applied to a learner driver, and whether it should be the same as is expected of an experienced driver.
Wilson v Racher [1974] ICR 428 is a UK labour law case concerning constructive dismissal. It serves as an example of an employer being found to have wrongfully dismissed an employee, because of the employer's own bad behaviour. Edmund-Davies LJ also made an important statement about the modern employment relationship,
What would today be regarded as almost an attitude of Czar-serf, which is to be found in some of the older cases where a dismissed employee failed to recover damages, would, I venture to think, be decided differently today. We have by now come to realise that a contract of service imposes upon the parties a duty of mutual respect.
Williams v Natural Life Health Foods Ltd[1998] UKHL 17 is an important English tort law, company law and contract law case. It held that for there to be an effective assumption of responsibility, there must be some direct or indirect conveyance that a director had done so, and that a claimant had relied on the information. Otherwise only a company itself, as a separate legal person, would be liable for negligent information.
Lemmerman v. A.T. Williams Oil Co., 318 N.C. 577, 350 S.E.2d 83 (1986), was a case before the Supreme Court of North Carolina, which hinged on the question of whether the plaintiff met the definition as an "employee" of the A.T. Williams Oil Co. under the state's Workers' Compensation Act.
Lister v Romford Ice and Cold Storage Co Ltd[1956] UKHL 6 is an important English tort law, contract law and labour law, which concerns vicarious liability and an ostensible duty of an employee to compensate the employer for torts he commits in the course of employment.
Mogul Steamship Co Ltd v McGregor, Gow & Co [1892] AC 25 is an English tort law case concerning the economic tort of conspiracy to injure. A product of its time, the courts adhered to a laissez faire doctrine allowing firms to form a cartel, which would now be seen as contrary to the Competition Act 1998.
Illegality in English law is a potential ground in English contract law, tort, trusts or UK company law for a court to refuse to enforce an obligation. The illegality of a transaction, either because of public policy under the common law, or because of legislation, potentially means no action directly concerning the deal will be heard by the courts. The doctrine is reminiscent of the Latin phrase "Ex turpi causa non oritur actio", meaning "no cause of action arises from a wrong". The primary problem arising when courts refuse to enforce an agreement is the extent to which an innocent party may recover any property already conveyed through the transaction. Hence, illegality raises important questions for English unjust enrichment law.
Johnstone v Bloomsbury Health Authority [1992] QB 333 is an English contract law case, concerning implied terms and unfair terms under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.
The eggshell rule is a well-established legal doctrine in common law, used in some tort law systems, with a similar doctrine applicable to criminal law. The rule states that, in a tort case, the unexpected frailty of the injured person is not a valid defense to the seriousness of any injury caused to them.
Viasystems (Tyneside) Ltd v Thermal Transfer (Northern) Ltd[2005] EWCA Civ 1151 is an English tort law and UK labour law case, which held that a worker can have more than one employer at the same time, who will be vicariously liable for the worker.
