Basic Concepts

AuthorEric E. Johnson
Pages23-34
23
1. Basic Concepts
To start, it’s helpful to get some context for what you will be
studying: what torts is, where it comes from, and how it fits into the
general scheme of law and the law-school curriculum.
What is Torts?
Torts is traditionally one of the core, basic, required courses in law
school. The subject of torts is civil lawsuits in which one person
alleges that another person perpetrated some harm. Personal injury,
medical malpractice, and defamation are all subjects of torts.
The subject matter of torts is broad and fundamental. If you wrote
out a list of 10 things someone could sue over, most of them would
probably be torts. Breach of contract is a matter for your contracts
course. Questions of who owns what are questions for your property
course. And many modern claims, such as copyright infringement or
antitrust violation, are based in specific federal statutes. But
otherwise, most of the traditional, frequently invoked claims that can
serve as a basis for a lawsuit can be categorized as torts. Someone
punches you? That’s a tort – it’s called battery. A careless driver loses
control and drives over your lovingly hewn shrubbery? That’s a tort
it’s called negligence. An enraged neighbor intentionally drives over
your shrubbery? That’s the tort of trespass to land. The neighbor does
it over and over? Well, depending on how lovingly hewn the
shrubbery was, that could be the tort of intentional infliction of emotional
distress. Other torts include slander, invasion of privacy, products liability,
and fraud.
The word “tort” dates back to Middle English, where it meant a wrong
or an injury. The word, with its meaning, came to Middle English, by
way of Old French, from the medieval Latin “tortum.” That word
was produced as the past participle of “torquere,” which means to

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