Common law torts are civil wrongs developed through court decisions rather than statutes, and they give an injured person a way to make the responsible party pay. When someone’s conduct hurts you or damages your property, tort law decides whether that person owes you money. The obligation does not depend on a contract between you. It comes from society’s baseline expectation that people act with ordinary care toward one another, and its purpose is straightforward: shift the cost of an injury from the person who suffered it to the person who caused it.
Tort claims sort into three broad categories based on the defendant’s state of mind and the nature of the conduct: intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability. Each has its own proof requirements, but nearly all tort claims turn on the same four elements and are subject to the same practical filters: shared fault, defenses, deadlines, and the burden of proof.
Intentional Torts
An intentional tort occurs when someone acts with the purpose of causing a particular result or knows with substantial certainty the result will follow. Intent here does not mean malice. It means the person meant to do the physical act that led to the harm. Shove someone as a joke, they fall and break a wrist, and you have committed an intentional act even though you never wanted anyone hurt.
Battery is the most familiar example. It involves deliberately making harmful or offensive physical contact with another person without their consent. The contact does not need to be violent or direct. Grabbing an object out of someone’s hand or knocking a hat off their head qualifies, because the law treats items closely connected to your body as extensions of your person.1Legal Information Institute. Battery Assault involves no touching at all. It occurs when someone intentionally causes you to believe harmful or offensive contact is about to happen. You don’t need to prove you were afraid, only that you were aware the contact was imminent and that a reasonable person in your position would have been aware too.2Legal Information Institute. Assault
False imprisonment happens when someone intentionally confines you in a bounded area without your consent or legal authority. The restraint can be physical, like a locked door, or psychological, like a threat of force if you try to leave. You must be aware of the confinement while it is happening.3Legal Information Institute. False Imprisonment Trespass to land covers unauthorized entry onto someone else’s property, and it applies whether or not you cause damage. Conversion is the civil equivalent of theft: taking someone’s personal property and exercising control over it in a way that effectively deprives them of ownership.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress applies when conduct is so extreme and outrageous that it causes severe emotional harm. Courts set a high bar. The behavior must go well beyond rudeness, insults, or ordinary workplace friction. Threats against a family member, sustained harassment, or exploiting a known vulnerability are the kinds of facts that tend to meet the standard.4Legal Information Institute. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Defamation belongs in the intentional family too. It protects reputation rather than body or property, and it applies when someone communicates a false statement of fact about you to a third party and that statement causes harm. Written defamation is libel; spoken defamation is slander. A successful claim requires a false statement presented as fact, publication to someone other than you, at least negligent fault, and resulting harm.5Legal Information Institute. Defamation Some categories of false statements, like a false accusation of a serious crime or an attack on someone’s professional competence, are treated as so inherently damaging that harm is presumed.
Negligence
Negligence is the workhorse of tort law. Most personal injury lawsuits are built on it. Unlike intentional torts, negligence does not care what the defendant was thinking. It asks whether the person failed to exercise the level of care the situation demanded. To prove negligence, you must show the defendant owed you a duty of care, breached that duty, and that the breach caused your actual harm.6Legal Information Institute. Negligence
The measuring stick is the reasonable person standard: a hypothetical average member of the community who exercises ordinary care and attention. When evaluating a driver, the court asks what a prudent driver would have done at that intersection or in that traffic. If the defendant’s behavior falls below that bar, the breach element is satisfied. The standard is objective, and it does not make exceptions for someone who is naturally inattentive or inexperienced. A property owner who ignores a broken step or lets ice build up on a walkway can be found negligent if a visitor gets hurt, because foreseeable risks demand reasonable steps to prevent harm.
Higher Standards for Professionals
The bar rises for doctors, attorneys, engineers, and other professionals. They are measured not against an ordinary community member but against a competent practitioner in the same field with similar training. A surgeon is held to the standard of a reasonably skilled surgeon. A specialist faces an even higher bar: a cardiologist is compared to other cardiologists, not general practitioners.
Because jurors rarely have the expertise to evaluate medical or technical decisions on their own, establishing the professional standard of care almost always requires testimony from a qualified expert witness. The expert explains what a competent professional would have done and how the defendant fell short. Most malpractice claims are won or lost on this testimony. Without it, the case collapses regardless of how injured the plaintiff is.
Negligence Per Se
A shortcut exists when the defendant violated a statute. Under negligence per se, breaking a law designed to protect a particular class of people can automatically satisfy the breach element. If a driver runs a red light and hits a pedestrian, the plaintiff doesn’t need to argue about what a reasonable driver would have done. The traffic law sets the standard, and violating it is a breach by definition.7Legal Information Institute. Per Se The plaintiff still has to prove the violation caused the injury and that the statute was meant to prevent the type of harm that occurred.
Strict Liability
Some activities are so inherently dangerous that the law holds the person performing them responsible for any resulting harm, regardless of how careful they were. The plaintiff doesn’t need to prove intent or carelessness. All that matters is that the activity took place and caused the damage.8Legal Information Institute. Strict Liability
Outside of product defects, courts identify two main triggers. The first is keeping certain animals. If you own a wild animal like a venomous snake or a large predator, you bear absolute responsibility for any injuries it causes. The second is abnormally dangerous activities. Courts weigh factors like the degree of risk, the severity of potential harm, whether reasonable care can eliminate the danger, how common the activity is, whether the location suits it, and whether its value to the community justifies the risk. Blasting with explosives near a residential neighborhood is the textbook example. No amount of professional care makes it safe for the neighbors.
Strict liability also covers defective products. If you are injured by a product with a defect, the manufacturer and other parties in the distribution chain can be held liable regardless of the care they exercised. Courts recognize design defects, manufacturing defects, and marketing defects involving inadequate warnings or instructions.9Legal Information Institute. Products Liability The practical benefit for consumers is that you don’t need to prove anyone in the factory was careless, only that the product was defective and the defect caused your injury.
The Four Elements of a Tort Claim
Regardless of category, most tort claims require proof of four elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. Missing any one sinks the case.
Duty is the threshold question. The defendant must have owed you a legal obligation to act with some standard of care. This often arises from the relationship between the parties. A doctor owes a duty to patients. A driver owes a duty to other motorists and pedestrians. A property owner owes a duty to visitors. If no duty exists, the analysis stops before it starts.
Breach means the defendant’s conduct fell short of that duty. In a negligence case, this is where the reasonable person standard does its work. In strict liability, breach is effectively assumed once you show the activity or defect existed.
Causation links the breach to your injury and has two parts. Cause-in-fact asks whether your injury would have occurred without the defendant’s conduct. This is the “but-for” test: but for the defendant running the red light, you would not have been hit. Proximate cause then asks whether the type of harm you suffered was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s actions.10Legal Information Institute. Direct and Proximate Cause Proximate cause is what prevents liability from spiraling into absurdity. If a minor mistake triggers an improbable chain reaction harming someone far removed from the original act, the court will likely find no proximate cause.
Damages are the final element. You have to show a real, compensable loss: medical expenses, lost income, property repair costs, or pain and suffering. Without actual damages, the legal system provides no remedy even if the defendant clearly breached a duty. Some intentional torts like trespass are the exception, where nominal damages may be awarded simply for the violation of your rights.
What You Can Recover
Tort damages fall into two broad categories. Compensatory damages reimburse actual losses. Economic damages cover medical bills, lost wages, and property repair costs. Non-economic damages cover pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life.11Legal Information Institute. Damages Some states cap non-economic damages, particularly in medical malpractice cases, while others impose no statutory limit.
Punitive damages serve a different purpose. They are not about compensating you but about punishing the defendant and deterring similar behavior. Courts reserve them for conduct that is especially reckless or egregious. The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that punitive awards exceeding a single-digit ratio to compensatory damages will rarely satisfy constitutional due process, and when compensatory damages are already substantial, an equal amount of punitive damages may represent the outer limit.12Justia. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408 (2003)
One rule that often surprises defendants is the collateral source rule. The fact that you received compensation from another source, such as your health insurer, does not reduce what the defendant owes. The defendant cannot tell the jury your medical bills were already covered. The reasoning is that the defendant should not benefit from your foresight in buying coverage.13Legal Information Institute. Collateral Source Rule Some jurisdictions have carved out exceptions, particularly in medical malpractice cases, but the traditional version remains the default in many courts.
How Shared Fault Changes Your Recovery
Most accidents involve mistakes on both sides. How the legal system handles shared fault depends on where you live, and the differences are dramatic.
Most jurisdictions follow some form of comparative negligence, which reduces your recovery by the percentage of fault assigned to you. If you are 30% responsible for an accident and your total damages are $100,000, you collect $70,000. Two variations exist within this system. Pure comparative negligence lets you recover something even if you are 99% at fault, though the award shrinks accordingly. Modified comparative negligence cuts you off entirely once your share reaches a threshold, either 50% or 51% depending on the jurisdiction.14Legal Information Institute. Comparative Negligence
A handful of jurisdictions still follow the older contributory negligence rule, which bars you from recovery entirely if you bear any fault at all, even 1%. Most states have abandoned this doctrine, but it persists in a small number of places. Which system applies in your jurisdiction can decide whether you collect a reduced award or nothing at all.
Common Defenses
Defendants have several established defenses that can reduce or eliminate liability. A strong defense can derail an otherwise solid claim.
Consent and Assumption of Risk
If you voluntarily agreed to accept the risk of an activity, you generally cannot sue when that risk materializes. Express assumption of risk usually involves a signed waiver, like the forms you sign before skydiving or joining a gym. Implied assumption comes from your conduct rather than a document. Playing a pickup basketball game carries an inherent risk of contact injuries, and participating shows your acceptance of that risk.15Legal Information Institute. Assumption of Risk In many jurisdictions, implied assumption of risk has been folded into the comparative negligence framework rather than operating as a standalone defense.
Self-Defense
Self-defense justifies force when you reasonably believe it is necessary to protect yourself from an imminent threat of unlawful physical harm. Three requirements matter. The danger must be immediate, not a future possibility. The force must be proportional to the threat. And you cannot be the person who started the confrontation.16Legal Information Institute. Self-Defense Exceed reasonable force and the defense fails; you become liable for the excess.
Necessity
Necessity justifies an intentional trespass or interference with property during an emergency. The law distinguishes public and private necessity. If you damage someone’s property to protect the public, such as demolishing a building to create a firebreak during a wildfire, you typically owe nothing. Private necessity is more limited. If you dock your boat at someone’s private pier during a storm to save yourself, you have the right to stay until the emergency passes, but you must compensate the owner for any actual damage.17Legal Information Institute. Private Necessity
When Someone Else Pays
You do not always sue the person who directly caused the harm. Under respondeat superior, employers are legally responsible for wrongful acts committed by employees within the scope of their employment. If a delivery driver causes an accident while making a delivery, the employer can be held liable.18Legal Information Institute. Respondeat Superior
The critical question is whether the employee was acting within the scope of the job. Jurisdictions apply different tests. Some ask whether the activity benefited the employer, even indirectly. Others ask whether the activity was characteristic enough of the job to be considered part of it. A delivery driver who causes an accident while making a detour to run a personal errand may fall outside the scope of employment, shielding the employer.
The rules change for independent contractors. Hiring parties are generally not liable for a contractor’s torts. But important exceptions exist: work involving inherently dangerous activities, negligent instructions from the hiring party, or negligence in selecting the contractor.19Legal Information Institute. Independent Contractor
Filing Deadlines
Every tort claim comes with a deadline. The statute of limitations sets a window within which you must file or lose the right to sue permanently. For personal injury claims, that window runs from roughly one year to six years depending on the jurisdiction and the type of tort. Miss the deadline by a day and the court will almost certainly dismiss the case, no matter how strong the evidence.
The clock usually starts on the date of the injury. Several exceptions can pause it. The discovery rule is the most common: when you could not reasonably have known about the injury at the time, the clock starts when you discovered or should have discovered the harm. This comes up often in medical malpractice, where a surgical error may not produce symptoms for months or years. Fraudulent concealment by the defendant can also pause the clock, as can the plaintiff’s status as a minor or a person lacking mental capacity.
A statute of repose is a different and less forgiving deadline. While a statute of limitations runs from the date of injury or discovery, a statute of repose runs from the date of the defendant’s last relevant act, whether anyone has been injured yet or not. These are common in product liability and construction defect cases. A statute of repose can bar your claim before you even know you have been hurt, and it typically cannot be paused for equitable reasons.
The Burden of Proof
The plaintiff carries the burden of proof in every tort case. Unlike criminal trials, which require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, tort cases use a lower standard called preponderance of the evidence. You need to show that your version of events is more likely true than not.20Legal Information Institute. Burden of Proof
Think of it as a scale that tips just past the midpoint. The jury weighs testimony, documents, and expert opinions to decide which side’s account is more convincing. If the evidence is evenly balanced, the defendant wins because the plaintiff failed to tip the scale. Nobody is going to prison in a civil case, so the system does not demand the near-certainty required in criminal cases. What it does demand is enough evidence to make the defendant’s responsibility more probable than not.