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Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. The core concept of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care in their actions, by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people or property.
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad connotations, product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.
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. In some, but not all, civil and mixed law jurisdictions, the term delict is used to refer to this category of civil wrong, though it can also refer to criminal offences in some jurisdictions and tort is the general term used in comparative law. The word tort stems from Old French via the Norman Conquest and Latin via the Roman Empire. The word 'tort' was first used in a legal context in the 1580s, although different words were used for similar concepts prior to this time.
In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant.
This article addresses torts in United States law. As such, it covers primarily common law. Moreover, it provides general rules, as individual states all have separate civil codes. There are three general categories of torts: intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability torts.
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.
Rylands v Fletcher[1868] UKHL 1 was a decision by the House of Lords which established a new area of English tort law. Rylands employed contractors to build a reservoir, playing no active role in its construction. When the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts improperly filled with debris, they chose to continue work rather than properly blocking them up. The result was that on 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst and flooded a neighbouring mine, run by Fletcher, causing £937 worth of damage. Fletcher brought a claim under negligence against Rylands, through which the case eventually went to the Exchequer of Pleas. At the court of first instance, the majority ruled in favour of Rylands. Bramwell B, however, dissenting, argued that the claimant had the right to enjoy his land free of interference from water, and that as a result the defendant was guilty of trespass and the commissioning of a nuisance. Bramwell's argument was affirmed, both by the Court of Exchequer Chamber and the House of Lords, leading to the development of the "Rule in Rylands v Fletcher"; that "the person who for his own purposes brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril, and, if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape".
Where two or more persons are liable in respect of the same liability, in most common law legal systems they may either be:
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.
Comparative responsibility is a doctrine of tort law that compares the fault of each party in a lawsuit for a single injury. Comparative responsibility may apply to intentional torts as well as negligence and encompasses the doctrine of comparative negligence.
Tort reform refers to changes in the civil justice system in common law countries that aim to reduce the ability of plaintiffs to bring tort litigation or to reduce damages they can receive. Such changes are generally justified under the grounds that litigation is an inefficient means to compensate plaintiffs; that tort law permits frivolous or otherwise undesirable litigation to crowd the court system; or that the fear of litigation can serve to curtail innovation, raise the cost of consumer goods or insurance premiums for suppliers of services, and increase legal costs for businesses. Tort reform has primarily been prominent in common law jurisdictions, where criticism of judge-made rules regarding tort actions manifests in calls for statutory reform by the legislature.
Irish law on product liability was for most of its history based solely on negligence. With the Liability for Defective Products Act, 1991 it has now also the benefit of a statutory, strict liability regime.
The Consumer Protection Act 1987 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which made important changes to the consumer law of the United Kingdom. Part 1 implemented European Community (EC) Directive 85/374/EEC, the product liability directive, by introducing a regime of strict liability for damage arising from defective products. Part 2 created government powers to regulate the safety of consumer products through Statutory Instruments. Part 3 defined a criminal offence of giving a misleading price indication.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to tort law in common law jurisdictions:
The Product Liability Directive85/374/EEC is a directive of the Council of the European Communities which created a regime of strict liability for defective products applicable in all member states of the European Union, the other EEA members and the United Kingdom.
Burnie Port Authority v General Jones Pty Ltd is a tort law case from the High Court of Australia, which decided it would abolish the rule in Rylands v Fletcher, and the ignis suus principle, incorporating them generally into the tort of negligence.
Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 24 Cal.2d 453, 150 P.2d 436 (1944), was a decision of the Supreme Court of California involving an injury caused by an exploding bottle of Coca-Cola. It was an important case in the development of the common law of product liability in the United States, not so much for the actual majority opinion, but for the concurring opinion of California Supreme Court justice Roger Traynor.
Chysky v. Drake Bros. Co., 235 N.Y. 468, 139 N.E. 576 (1922), was a products liability case before the New York Court of Appeals. The Court held that a plaintiff cannot recover from a defendant based on implied warranty when she does not have contractual privity with him; thus, a plaintiff cannot recover from a defendant who sold her employer food unfit for consumption, because the defendant's implied warranty extended only to the employer.
Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc, was a California torts case in which the Supreme Court of California dealt with the torts regarding product liability and warranty breaches. The primary legal issue of the case was to determine whether a manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being. The case was originally heard in a San Diego district court where the verdict was against the manufacturer. This verdict was appealed by the manufacturer to the Supreme Court of California which was presided by Gibson, C. J., Schauer, J., McComb, J., Peters, J., Tobriner, J., and Peek, J., and the opinion was delivered by Judge Roger J Traynor.
A and Others v National Blood Authority and Another, also known as the Hepatitis C Litigation, was a landmark product liability case of 2001 primarily concerning blood transfusions but also blood products or transplanted organs, all of which were infected with hepatitis C, where liability was established under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and the Product Liability Directive (85/374/EEC) even in the absence of the ability to test to ascertain which blood transfusions were defective. The claimants were 114 individuals, six of whom were considered lead plaintiffs and given close consideration by the judge, Mr Justice Burton. Several of the claimants were minors who had become infected with Hepatitis C in the course of their treatment for leukaemia. The defendants were the National Blood Authority (NBA) and in respect of Wales, the Velindre NHS Trust, Cardiff. The court found that the UK government should have implemented measures to screen donated blood for HCV by March 1990, rather than September 1991.