The Law of Tort
Most crimes involve torts, but the commission of a tort is not always a crime. Discuss
TORT LAWS 2
The Law of Tort
Tort as a law jurisdiction is a civil wrong that unfairly makes someone else suffer
resulting in legal liability for the individuals who commit the tortuous acts. Although most of the
crimes may be torts, the cause of lawful action is not unavoidably a crime, as harm might be due
to negligence that does not amount to criminal negligence. The casualty of the harm can regain
their loss as breakages in a lawsuit. In order to prevail, the claimant in a lawsuit should show that
the actions were the legally recognizable source of the harm (Lahe, 2013). The correspondent of
tort in civil law influences is delict.
Legal injury is not limited to physical injury and can include economical, emotional, or
reputational injuries as well as infringements of property, privacy, and constitutional rights. Torts
encompass such wide topics as false imprisonment, auto accidents, false imprisonment,
defamation, copyright infringement, and product liability (toxic torts) ( Lahe, 2013). While most
of the torts are as a result of negligence, tort also recognizes intended actions, where an
individual has deliberately acted in ways that harm other people. This allows recovery without
the demonstration of negligence.
Tort law is dissimilar from criminal law in the following ways: First, torts may result
from negligence but not intentional or criminal actions. Another reason is that tort lawsuits have
a lower weight of proof such as prevalence of evidence beyond a reasonable distrust. In some
cases, a plaintiff can triumph in a tort case even if an individual who caused the loss was
acquitted in the early criminal trial (Lahe, 2013). Therefore, most crimes are caused by tort but
the commission of the tort is not regarded as always a crime.
TORT LAWS 3
References
Lahe, J. (2013). The Concept of Fault of the Tortfeasor in Estonian Tort Law: A Comparative
Perspective. Review Of Central & East European Law, 38(2), 141-170.