What is the purpose of the law of torts?

Résumé du document

According to Sir Henry Maine, “the penal law of ancient communities is not the law of crimes; it is the law of wrongs, or to use the English technical word, of tort” . If the tortious liability seems to be an old principle of law, it is important to underline that tort law has only been a distinct area of study in law since 1860 with Addison's Wrongs and Their Remedies: Being a Treatise on the Law of Torts. Nowadays, torts is often compared to Contract Law – and also often mistaken or used similarly as it is showed by the number of conflicts of law involving tort and contract law. If defining tort law is in no means easy, it is important though to make the distinction between these two subjects, which are both part of Civil Law. On the contrary to contract law, where people are linked by a contract that makes them have obligations to each other, “there is no such agreement in torts and obligations are imposed to every person as a matter of law” .

Having understood this definition, we may wonder what is the main objective of tort law. In order to understand the purpose of the law of torts, we will study three main subjects: first, the role of compensation in the law of torts, which includes the idea of corrective justice and appeasement, then we will wonder if the law of tort is not leading to a kind of compensation culture, and to finish we will show and criticize the purpose of deterrence law of torts can have.

Extraits

[...] Such claims have been partly driven by changes in the way in which the legal system operates in this area.“[11] Actually, the public awareness of the right to claim has increased in the last few years, and especially thanks to organizations such as lawyers organizations advertising on the possibility for people seek compensation in case of personal injury and on the availability of claims. For instance, the Association for the Personal Injury Lawyers has been created in the United Kingdom in 1990. The kind of cases that are considered as taking part of this compensation culture are minor injuries, or little accidents where we can finally see tenuous links between the plaintiff and the defendant. [...]

[...] We can describe these cases are opportunistic. In 2004, the Better Regulation Task Force said: “The term compensation culture is not used to describe a society where people are able to seek compensation. Rather a compensation culture implies that a decision to seek compensation is wrong”[12] So we can see that tort law is suffering from the downward slide of one of its main purpose: the compensation of real victims. Furthermore, when we focus on the tort of negligence, a tort which is quite recent, created with the Donoghue v. [...]

[...] There is no denying that deterrence is a key-purpose of the law of torts, even if the development of insurance and the fact that a defendant will no pay himself the damages in case of an accident weakens the deterrent effect of the law of torts. Although, it is clear that regarding the idea of reputation of a professional, the deterrent effect is clearly efficient, even if I think it should be applied to the employer. Conclusion To conclude this essay, and after having seen the two main purposes of the law of torts: compensation, including appeasement and corrective justice, and deterrence, we can say there are some criticisms to underline for both of these purposes, that are maybe linked to our time. [...]

[...] GLANVILLE Williams, “The Aims of the Law of Tort” [1951] CLP 137. COOK John, Law of Tort: Fifth Edition, Op. cit., p15. BETTER REGULATION TASK FORCE, Better Routes to Redress (2004). Available on: http://claimscouncil.org/system/files/4/original/BRTF_Better_Routes_to_Redre ss.pdf Kirby v Burke Holloway & Company [1944] IR 207 Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] UKHL 100 STEELE Jenny, Tort Law: Text, Cases and Materials, Oxford University Press, Oxford p15. Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2003] UKHL 47 BBC News website, 6th January 2004 Daily Telegraph, 20th December 2003 Lievre v Gould [1893] 1 Q.B.D SAMUEL Geoffrey, Tort: Cases and Materials: Second Edition, Sweet & Maxwell, London p60. [...]

[...] What is the purpose of the law of torts? Introduction According to Sir Henry Maine, “the penal law of ancient communities is not the law of crimes; it is the law of wrongs, or to use the English technical word, of tort”[1]. If the tortious liability seems to be an old principle of law, it is important to underline that tort law has only been a distinct area of study in law since 1860 with Addison's Wrongs and Their Remedies: Being a Treatise on the Law of Torts. [...]