Law Every 1L Should Know -- Torts

So what is a tort? In plain English, a tort is a civil wrong.

Someone does something or fails to do something that injures another person, and the injured person can sue for money damages.

The word tort comes from the Latin for twisted or wrong.

In law school, you'll just learn it as the name of an entire body of law.

It's important to understand how torts differ from crimes.

When someone commits a crime, the state prosecutes the wrongdoer, and the punishment is usually jail time or a fine paid to the government.

When somebody commits a tort, the injured person, not the state, brings the lawsuit, and the remedy is usually money damages paid to the victim.

The injured person is called the plaintiff.

The person being sued is called the defendant.

You'll see those two words on every page of your torts casebook, so get comfortable with them now.

A single act can be both a crime and a tort.

If a drunk driver runs a red light and crashes into another car, that's the crime of driving under the influence, prosecuted by the state, and it's also the tort of negligence, where the injured driver sues for medical bills and car repairs.

Same conduct, two different systems running on parallel tracks.

Tort law is generally divided into three big categories, intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability.

We're going to spend a few minutes on intentional torts, and then we'll spend most of our time on negligence.

Strict liability, which covers things like injuries from defective products, attacks by wild animals, and abnormally dangerous activities, we'll save for another episode.

So let's start with intentional torts.

The defining feature of an intentional tort is, you guessed it, intent.

Intent means the defendant either acted with the purpose of causing a particular result, or the defendant knew with substantial certainty that the result would happen.

So if I throw a rock at someone, wanting to hit them, that's intent.

But intent also covers cases where I don't necessarily want the result, but I knew it was almost certainly going to happen.

If I throw a rock into a crowded room, I may not have wanted to hit anyone specific, but I knew with substantial certainty that I'd hit someone.

That's intent, too.

There are several intentional torts you'll learn about during your torts class.

I'm just going to name them briefly, so you'll have labels in your head.