There are numerous specific torts including trespass, assault, battery, negligence, products liability, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. There are also separate areas of tort law including nuisance, defamation, invasion of privacy, and a category of economic torts.
Torts may be categorised in several ways, with a particularly common division between negligent and intentional torts. Quasi-torts are unusual tort actions.
What is a tort, and what is tort law for? On one leading scholarly account, torts are legal liability rules that seek to promote the welfare of society at large by disincentivizing socially suboptimal behavior and distributing the costs of accidents to those who can best bear them.
Torts address private harm and are resolved through civil courts, typically with monetary compensation as the remedy. Crimes are prosecuted by the state and focus on punishment rather than compensation.
Negligent torts arise from a failure to exercise reasonable care, while intentional torts result from willful misconduct.
Tort law defines what counts, in the eyes of the law, as wrongfully injuring another person – assault, fraud, libel, malpractice, negligence, and nuisance are all torts. Tort law also gives victims of such wrongs the opportunity to obtain a court-ordered remedy from the wrongdoer.
Intentional torts commonly include such issues as assault and/or battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, theft, property damage, fraud or other deception, and trespassing.
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