LAW OF TORTS

Law of Torts

Tort law is the name given to a body of law that creates, and provides remedies for, civil wrongs that do not arise out of contractual duties.
A person who is legally injured may be able to use tort law to recover damages from someone who is legally responsible, or "liable," for those injuries. Generally speaking, tort law defines what constitutes a legal injury, and establishes the circumstances under which one person may be held liable for another's injury. Torts cover intentional acts and accidents.


Categories of torts (There are seven categories of torts)

1. Negligence
   It is a legal concept in the common law legal systems usually used to achieve compensation for injuries (not accidents). Negligence is a type of tort or delict (also known as a civil wrong).
   
2. Statutory torts
   A statutory tort is like any other, in that it imposes duties on private or public parties, however they are created by the legislature, not the courts.
   One example is in consumer protection, with the Product Liability Directive, where businesses making defective products that harm people must pay for any damage resulting. Liability for defective products is strict in most jurisdictions
   
3. Nuisance
   It is a common law tort. It means that which causes offence, annoyance, trouble or injury. A nuisance can be either public (also "common") or private.
   Public nuisance is a class of common law offence in which the injury, loss or damage is suffered by the local community as a whole rather than by individual victims.
   Private nuisance" is the interference with the right of specific people
   
4. Defamation
   It is tarnishing the reputation of someone; it is in two parts, slander and libel. Slander is spoken defamation and libel is printed and broadcast defamation, both share the same features.
   
5. Intentional torts
   Intentional torts are any intentional acts that are reasonably foreseeable to cause harm to an individual, and that do so. Intentional torts have several subcategories, including tort(s) against the person, including assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. Property torts involve any intentional interference with the property rights of the claimant.
   
6. Competition law
   Modern competition law is an important method for regulating the conduct of businesses in a market economy
   
7. Economic torts
   Economic torts are torts that provide the common law rules on liability for the infliction of pure economic loss, such as interference with economic or business relationships.
   Economic torts protect people from interference with their trade or business. The area includes the doctrine of restraint of trade and has largely been submerged in the twentieth century by statutory interventions on collective labour law, modern antitrust or competition law, and certain laws governing intellectual property, particularly unfair competition law. The "absence of any unifying principle drawing together the different heads of economic tort liability has often been remarked upon."
   

The principal torts can be listed as passing off, injurious falsehood and trade libel ,conspiracy, inducement of breach of contract, tortious interference (such as interference with economic relations or unlawful interference with trade), and watching and besetting. These torts represent the common law's historical attempt to balance the need to protect claimants against those who inflict economic harm and the wider need to allow effective, even aggressive, competition (including competition between employees and their workers).