Tort

A civil, not criminal, wrong. A negligent or intentional injury against a person or property, with the exception of breach of contract.

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Answers.com

Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.

Duhaime Legal Dictionary

The body of the law which allows an injured person to obtain compensation from the person who caused the injury. Derived from the Latin word tortus which meant wrong. Also, in French, tort means a wrong but in civil law, what is generally defined by common law as torts, is recognized as civil liability and called a delict.

One substantial difference between a tort and a delict: the former is a product of the common law albeit now somewhat modified by statute, whereas the delict, as with most things civil law, is purely a creature of statute.

FindLaw

A wrongful act other than a breach of contract that injures another and for which the law imposes civil liability: a violation of a duty (as to exercise due care) imposed by law as distinguished from contract for which damages or declaratory relief (as an injunction) may be obtained.

Law.com Dictionary

n. from French for "wrong," a civil wrong or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another. Torts include all negligence cases as well as intentional wrongs which result in harm. Therefore tort law is one of the major areas of law (along with contract, real property and criminal law) and results in more civil litigation than any other category. Some intentional torts may also be crimes, such as assault, battery, wrongful death, fraud, conversion (a euphemism for theft) and trespass on property and form the basis for a lawsuit for damages by the injured party. Defamation, including intentionally telling harmful untruths about another-either by print or broadcast (libel) or orally (slander)-is a tort and used to be a crime as well.

Lect Law Library

A negligent or intentional civil wrong not arising out of a contract or statute. These include "intentional torts" such as battery or defamation, and torts for negligence.

A tort is an act that injures someone in some way, and for which the injured person may sue the wrongdoer for damages. Legally, torts are called civil wrongs, as opposed to criminal ones. (Some acts like battery, however, may be both torts and crimes; the wrongdoer may face both civil and criminal penalties.)

Under traditional law, family members were prohibited from suing each other for torts. The justification was that allowing family members to sue each other would lead to a breakdown of the family. Today, however, many states recognize that if family members have committed torts against each other, there often already is a breakdown in family relationships. Thus, they no longer bar members from suing each other. In these states, spouses may sue each other either during the marriage or after they have separated.

Normally, tort lawsuits against a spouse are brought separate and apart from any divorce, annulment or other family law case. Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, New York and Tennessee, however, allow or encourage combining the tort case with the family law case; New Jersey requires it.

Legal-Dictionary.org

The breach of a duty that results in an injury for which there is a remedy at law.

Wikipedia

Tort law is a body of law that addresses, and provides remedies for, civil wrongs not arising out of contractual obligations. A person who suffers legal damages may be able to use tort law to receive compensation 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. Tort law spans intentional and negligent acts.

For instance, Alice throws a ball and accidentally hits Brenda in the eye. Brenda may sue Alice for losses occasioned by the accident (e.g., costs of medical treatment, lost income during time off work). Whether or not Brenda wins her suit depends on if she can prove Alice engaged in tortious conduct. Here, Brenda would attempt to prove that Alice had a duty and failed to exercise the standard of care which a reasonable person would render in throwing the ball.

One of the main topics of the substance of tort law is determining the standard of care—a legal phrase that means distinguishing between when conduct is or is not tortious. Put another way, the big issue is whether a person suffers the loss from his own injury, or whether it gets transferred to someone else.

Returning to the example above, if Alice threw the ball at Brenda purposely, Brenda could sue for the intentional tort of battery (and the action might also, separately, be pursued as a criminal matter). If it was an accident, Brenda must prove negligence. To do this, Brenda must show that her injury was reasonably foreseeable, that Alice owed Brenda a duty of care not to hit her with the ball, and that Alice failed to meet the standard of care required.

In much of the western world, the touchstone of tort liability is negligence. If the injured party cannot prove that the person believed to have caused the injury acted with negligence, at the very least, tort law will not compensate them. Tort law also recognizes intentional torts and strict liability, which apply to defendants who engage in certain actions.

In tort law, injury is defined broadly. Injury does not just mean a physical injury, such as where Brenda was struck by a ball. Injuries in tort law reflect any invasion of any number of individual interests. This includes interests recognized in other areas of law, such as property rights. Actions for nuisance and trespass to land can arise from interfering with rights in real property. Conversion and trespass to chattels can protect interference with movable property. Interests in prospective economic advantages from contracts can also be injured and become the subject of tort actions. A number of situations caused by parties in a contractual relationship may nevertheless be tort rather than contract claims, such as breach of fiduciary duty.