What constitutes a personal injury or tort?
Personal injury law is also known as “tort” law; tort is the French word for “wrong”. A tort is a civil wrong resulting in harm or injury recognized by law as a basis for a lawsuit. While some torts are also criminal acts punishable by imprisonment, the primary purpose of tort law is to provide relief from the damages incurred and to deter others from committing similar harmful acts. Torts fall into three general categories: - Intentional torts: When someone intentionally causes harm to another person or to another person’s property. Examples include assault, battery, defamation, false imprisonment, fraud, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
- Negligent torts: When someone fails to use reasonable due care to avoid a foreseeable harm to a person, place or thing. Examples include medical malpractice and motor vehicle accidents. For a comprehensive overview of negligence, see below.
- Strict liability torts: Strict liability means “liability without fault”; thus liability will be imposed whether or not the defendant was negligent or intended to cause harm. The law imposes strict liability on inherently or abnormally dangerous activities, or activities that are likely to cause particular kinds of harm. Strict liability is also often imposed on manufactured products, under the law of product liability. Strict liability claims do not involve proof of whether or not someone acted reasonably or used appropriate care in manufacturing a certain product. A defendant in a product liability claim will be found liable for damages to a plaintiff if it is found that the product is defective, regardless of whether the manufacturer or supplier exercised great care when designing and manufacturing it. Thus, the plaintiff does not have to demonstrate that the manufacturer or vendor was negligent or careless, only that:
- a defect in the product caused the accident
- the plaintiff was using the product in a manner consistent with the way it
was meant to be used
- the product was not substantially changed between the time it left the
seller or manufacturer's hands and the time it reached the plaintiff |
