Subject Guide
Torts
Torts is the area of law that governs civil wrongs—conduct that injures a person or their property—and determines when the wrongdoer must compensate the victim. It covers negligence, intentional harms, and liability imposed without fault, awarding damages to restore the injured party.
What Torts covers
Torts is a foundational 1L course and a heavily tested MBE and MEE subject on the bar exam. It asks a single recurring question: when one person's conduct causes harm to another, who must pay, and how much? The subject divides into three liability theories—negligence (the dominant fault-based theory), intentional torts, and strict liability—plus the specialized field of products liability and the rules governing defenses, damages, and when liability is imputed to others. Mastery requires fluency with multi-element rules (especially the four elements of negligence), the ability to spot multiple overlapping torts in a single fact pattern, and precise application of duty, causation, and defense doctrines. Because tort questions reward disciplined element-by-element analysis, Torts is an ideal subject for building the issue-spotting and IRAC habits that carry across the entire exam.
Key topics
- Negligence
- A defendant is liable in negligence when they owe a duty of reasonable care, breach it, and that breach is both the actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff's legally recognized damages.
- Intentional Torts
- Intentional torts—such as battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, trespass, and conversion—require a volitional act done with intent to bring about a harmful or offensive contact or result that in fact causes the harm.
- Strict Liability
- Strict liability imposes liability without regard to fault for harms caused by abnormally dangerous activities and by wild or known-dangerous animals, requiring only that the activity caused the kind of harm that made it dangerous.
- Products Liability
- A commercial seller in the chain of distribution is strictly liable for harm caused by a product that is defective in manufacture, design, or warning and was not substantially altered before reaching the user.
- Defenses & Immunities
- Defenses such as comparative or contributory negligence, assumption of risk, consent, self-defense, defense of others or property, and necessity—along with certain immunities—can reduce or bar a plaintiff's recovery.
- Damages & Remedies
- Tort remedies aim to make the plaintiff whole through compensatory damages for economic and non-economic loss, with punitive damages available for willful, wanton, or malicious conduct and a duty to mitigate avoidable losses.
- Vicarious Liability
- Under respondeat superior, an employer is vicariously liable for torts an employee commits within the scope of employment, while generally not liable for the torts of an independent contractor.
Practice Torts with LawCoach
LawCoach helps you turn Torts knowledge into exam points through realistic practice. You can drill MBE-style multiple-choice questions across negligence, intentional torts, strict and products liability, and defenses, then write MEE-style essays and MPT-style performance tasks under exam conditions. Paid essay answers are graded by a five-specialist reviewer panel covering issue-spotting, rule accuracy, application and analysis, structure and exam strategy, and counterargument and calibration, plus a synthesizer that pulls the feedback together; free essays receive a three-reviewer panel. As you practice, LawCoach tracks which Torts topics are weak—say, proximate cause or design-defect tests—and builds a study plan that directs you back to them, so you spend time where it moves your score. LawCoach is an educational study tool, not legal advice, and AI feedback can contain inaccuracies.
Frequently asked questions
- What are the four elements of negligence?
- The four elements of negligence are duty, breach, causation, and damages. The plaintiff must show the defendant owed a duty of reasonable care, breached that duty, that the breach was both the actual cause ("but-for") and proximate (legal) cause of the injury, and that the plaintiff suffered actual damages. Failing to prove any one element defeats the claim.
- What is the difference between negligence and an intentional tort?
- The difference is the defendant's state of mind. Intentional torts require intent—the defendant acted with purpose or substantial certainty that a harmful or offensive result would occur, as in battery or false imprisonment. Negligence requires no intent to harm; it requires only that the defendant fell below the standard of reasonable care and thereby caused injury.
- What is strict products liability?
- Strict products liability holds a commercial seller in a product's chain of distribution liable for injuries caused by a defective product, regardless of fault or how much care the seller took. The plaintiff must show the product had a manufacturing, design, or warning defect, the defect existed when it left the defendant's control, and it caused harm while being used in a foreseeable way. Casual or one-time sellers are generally not covered.
- How does comparative negligence affect a tort recovery?
- Comparative negligence reduces a plaintiff's damages in proportion to their own share of fault. Under pure comparative negligence, a plaintiff who is, for example, 70% at fault still recovers 30% of their damages. Under modified comparative negligence, recovery is barred once the plaintiff's fault crosses a threshold (typically 50% or 51%). This contrasts with traditional contributory negligence, which can bar recovery entirely.
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