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Negligence, nuisance, trespass, vicarious liability — 45 foundational tort cases
Tort law answers a deceptively simple question: when does the law require one person to compensate another for harm they have caused, even without a contract between them? It covers a wide sweep of civil wrongs — from personal injury and psychiatric harm to property damage, defamation, and interference with land — and its central task is to draw principled lines between losses that society expects individuals to bear themselves and losses that should be shifted to a defendant.
Three or four doctrines do most of the heavy lifting across the whole subject. The Caparo three-stage test (foreseeability, proximity, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty) structures almost every novel negligence claim. Once a duty is established, the Bolam/Bolitho standard asks whether the defendant fell below the conduct of a reasonable person in their position. Causation is governed by the but-for test, subject to exceptional modifications — most famously the material contribution to risk principle from Fairchild — where strict application would produce unjust results. Finally, remoteness under The Wagon Mound asks whether the type of harm suffered was reasonably foreseeable, keeping liability within proportionate bounds.
Several fault lines run through modern tort law that a strong student must track. The scope of liability for omissions and the liability of public bodies remains deeply contested after Robinson and Poole, with courts cautious about expanding duties to act. Psychiatric harm continues to generate hard distinctions between primary and secondary victims following Page v Smith and Alcock, distinctions many commentators regard as arbitrary. Vicarious liability has expanded significantly through Lister and Mohamud, yet Various Claimants v Morrisons showed the Supreme Court willing to pull back, so the boundaries of that doctrine are still unsettled. Finally, the law of causation in loss-of-a-chance cases — Hotson, Gregg v Scott, and Chester v Afshar — reveals genuine tension between doctrinal consistency and instinctive justice.
A defendant owes a duty of care where harm to the claimant was reasonably foreseeable, there was sufficient proximity between the parties, and it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty. Courts treat this as an incremental, analogical exercise rather than a formula automatically generating new duties.
A defendant breaches their duty of care by falling below the standard of a reasonable person in their position, taking into account the likelihood and gravity of harm, the cost of precautions, and any social utility in the defendant's conduct. In professional contexts the Bolam test applies, but a court may reject a body of professional opinion that lacks a logical basis under Bolitho.
A claimant must ordinarily prove that but for the defendant's breach they would not have suffered the harm — courts will not impose liability for a loss that would have occurred regardless. Where multiple defendants or scientific uncertainty make strict but-for proof impossible, the material contribution to risk exception can apply, though courts confine it carefully to avoid open-ended liability.
Even where breach and causation are proved, a defendant is only liable for harm of a type that was reasonably foreseeable at the time of the breach, not every consequence flowing from it. Once the type of harm is foreseeable, the defendant is liable for its full extent even if the precise manner or severity was not — this is the thin skull rule.
An employer can be held liable for a wrongful act committed by an employee where there is a sufficiently close connection between the employment relationship and the wrongdoing, even if the specific act was unauthorised or deliberately harmful. Courts ask whether the employer's enterprise created or materially enhanced the risk that led to the harm, a test that has expanded but is not unlimited.
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