Tort Law

Intentional Torts

Civil wrongs committed by a defendant who meant to cause a result or knew it was substantially certain to follow. Battery, defamation, fraud, and false imprisonment are examples. In business they arise from overzealous security guards, deceptive sales tactics, and aggressive debt collection.

Negligence

Harm caused not by intent but by a failure to use the care a reasonable person would have used. The plaintiff must prove four elements: a duty of care, a breach of that duty, causation, and actual damages. Slip-and-fall claims and negligent hiring claims are the everyday versions a business faces.

Strict Liability

Liability without proof of intent or carelessness, imposed where the law wants maximum protection. It applies to defective products and to abnormally dangerous activities such as blasting. A plaintiff wins by showing the defect or the activity caused the harm, with no need to show fault.

Vicarious Liability

The doctrine of respondeat superior makes an employer liable for torts an employee commits within the scope of employment. If a delivery driver causes a crash on a route, the injured person can sue the company. It is why businesses invest in training, supervision, and insurance.

Elements of a Tort

The specific components a plaintiff must prove to win a particular tort claim. Each tort has its own list, and a claim collapses if any one element is unproven. Defense lawyers attack the weakest element, so the analysis of elements is the core of every tort case.

Compensatory and Punitive Damages

Compensatory damages make the injured plaintiff whole for losses such as medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Punitive damages punish a defendant for malicious or reckless conduct and deter others, and they can reach amounts that insurance does not cover. Florida statutes cap and condition punitive awards.

Part 1: Explore and Select Tort Claims

Use the Tort Explorer to survey the range of recognized claims. You may investigate intentional torts such as assault, battery, false imprisonment, fraud, defamation, or tortious interference with business; negligence claims such as professional malpractice, negligent hiring, premises liability, or wrongful death; or strict liability claims such as product liability or abnormally dangerous activities. Once you have surveyed the options, select four distinct tort claims that interest you for the rest of the activity.

Part 2: Research Florida Caselaw

Find one Florida state or federal case for each of your four torts using Westlaw through the college library, Google Scholar, or a similar database. Read each case carefully to confirm it actually turns on the tort in question. Then paste the full text into the Case Evaluator and ask it to confirm that the court’s decision hinged on the tort rather than on a procedural question. If the AI tells you the tort was only mentioned in passing, find a different case.

Part 3: Reverse-Engineer Fact Patterns

For each case, use the Fact Pattern Generator to write a fictional but realistic scenario set in a business that raises the same tort issue the court decided. Your fact pattern must involve the core elements of the tort without copying details from the actual case: new characters, new facts, new context. By the end of this Part you should have four original, business-related fact patterns ready for analysis.

Part 4: Analyze and Post Your Deliverables

Use the Precedent Analyst to evaluate each fact pattern against its case. Explain how the real Florida decision could serve as precedent to resolve your fictional dispute: identify the relevant legal principles, compare the key facts, and show how the court’s reasoning would apply. Then post your results as a single new thread containing all four fact patterns, the citations for the four cases, and your analysis of each.

Part 5: Share Chat Link

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Tort Explorer

Act as my college-level torts tutor. Start with a high-level overview of tort law: its history and purpose, how it differs from contract law and criminal law, and the general principles behind tort claims. Then note that my assignment already gives me a list of common torts to choose from and ask me to pick one to discuss. When I name a tort, summarize it, list its elements, and give a short, realistic example fact pattern. If you quote or paraphrase the Restatement of Torts, name the section and tell me to confirm the wording, and do not invent section numbers. End by asking whether I have questions or want to explore another tort.

Layered explanation with a verification flag. The overview-then-drill-down structure lets you choose what to go deep on, and the instruction about Restatement sections is the responsible-use move: models cite the Restatement confidently and often wrongly.

Case Evaluator

Act as my torts study assistant. I will paste the full text of a Florida case that I believe illustrates a specific tort. Read it carefully and give me an honest assessment: summarize the key facts, explain the court’s reasoning, and identify the legal issue the court actually decided. Then tell me whether the case meaningfully illustrates the tort I selected. If the tort is central to the decision, explain how the case supports my understanding. If the tort is only mentioned in passing, or the case turns on another doctrine such as jurisdiction, procedure, or contract law, say so candidly and recommend that I find a different case. Wait for me to provide the case before you begin.

Source grounding with permission to disappoint. Giving the model the full opinion and explicitly inviting a negative answer is what makes it useful here; without that permission, models tend to confirm that whatever you found is exactly what you needed.

Fact Pattern Generator

Act as my torts writing assistant. I have pasted a Florida case that centers on a specific tort. After reading it, help me write an original, fictional fact pattern that raises the same tort issue in a realistic business setting. The scenario should mirror the legal reasoning and central issue of the case closely enough that the case could be used to analyze it, but with entirely new characters, facts, and context, reusing nothing from the original. When the fact pattern is done, check that it would support analysis under the case and ask whether I want to build another.

Constrained generation. The prompt pins the output to one case’s legal issue while forbidding reuse of its facts, which is the right division of labor: the model supplies invention and you supply the legal target it must hit.

Precedent Analyst

Act as my torts analysis coach. I have written a fictional fact pattern that raises a tort issue and I have read a Florida case involving the same tort. I will give you both. Use the case to help me analyze the fact pattern: identify the relevant legal principles, compare the facts of the case and the scenario, and explain how a court would reason through the new situation using the logic of the original decision. Be specific about which elements of the tort are met and where there is real uncertainty. When you finish, ask whether I want to work through another scenario.

Analogical reasoning made explicit. Asking for a fact-by-fact comparison and an element-by-element verdict forces the model to do the work a lawyer does with precedent, and gives you a structure you can check rather than a conclusion you have to trust.