Tort Law

Tort

A civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the law provides a remedy, usually money damages. Tort law compensates private harms rather than punishing crimes, though the same act, such as a battery, can sometimes lead to both a lawsuit and a criminal charge.

Intentional Tort

A harm the defendant meant to cause, or knew was substantially certain to result from their actions. Battery, assault, false imprisonment, and defamation are common examples. What sets this category apart is the defendant’s state of mind, not the severity of the injury.

Negligence

A harm caused by carelessness rather than intent: the defendant failed to use the care a reasonable person would have used. It is the most common category of tort and covers most accidents, from car crashes to slip-and-falls to malpractice.

Strict Liability

Liability imposed without regard to intent or carelessness, because the activity itself is treated as carrying its own risk. It applies in a few defined situations, mainly defective products, abnormally dangerous activities like blasting, and injuries caused by certain animals (many states make dog owners strictly liable by statute).

Duty of Care

A legal obligation to act with reasonable care toward others. In a negligence case, the first question is usually whether the defendant owed the injured person a duty at all, which is the issue at the heart of Palsgraf.

Breach of Duty

A failure to meet the required standard of care, judged by what a reasonable person would have done in the same situation. Breach is about conduct: what the defendant did or failed to do given the foreseeable risks.

Causation

The connection between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury. It asks both whether the harm would have happened “but for” the defendant’s act and whether the harm was a foreseeable result rather than a freak consequence too remote to support liability.

Damages

The harm the plaintiff suffered and the compensation meant to address it. Damages can cover measurable losses like medical bills and lost wages as well as harder-to-measure harms like pain and suffering. Without an actual injury, a negligence claim does not get off the ground.

Part 1: Learn the Categories

Read the Cornell LII entries on tort, negligence, and strict liability. By the end you should be able to say in your own words what a tort is and how the three categories differ, with negligence as the one to know best, since its four elements (duty, breach, causation, damages) come up again and again. Use the Category Coach prompt to quiz yourself on the distinctions, especially the line between an intentional tort and negligence, which trips up most people first.

Part 2: Read One Case

Read the Palsgraf opinion on CourtListener. It is short, famous, and turns on a single question: did the railroad owe Mrs. Palsgraf a duty when its employees, helping a passenger board, knocked a package that turned out to hold fireworks onto the tracks? Focus on how Cardozo’s majority answers the duty question through foreseeability and how Andrews’s dissent sees it differently. Use the Case Companion prompt to check your reading against the text rather than to summarize it for you.

Part 3: Find Torts in the News

This is the core of the activity. Find three recent news articles, one illustrating each category: an intentional tort, a negligence case, and a strict liability situation. They do not need to involve a filed lawsuit; a story about an injury, an accident, an assault, a product recall, or a dog attack is enough. Negligence will be easy to find, intentional torts often show up in coverage of assaults or defamation, and strict liability is the hardest, so look for defective-product injuries, recalls, or dog-bite stories. For each article, identify the likely tort, the party who would be responsible, and the one feature that puts it in that category (the defendant’s intent, their carelessness, or the no-fault nature of the activity). Use the Sorting Check prompt to test your reasoning, but commit to your own answer first, because the AI will sometimes confidently miscategorize a story.

Part 4: Write It Up

Write a discussion post of 300 to 500 words presenting your three articles. For each one, link the story, name the tort and the responsible party, and explain in a sentence or two what made it fit that category. Close with a short reflection: which category was hardest to find a clean example of, and what does that difficulty tell you about how often each kind of tort actually shows up in ordinary life?

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.

Category Coach

I am an introductory law student learning the three categories of tort: intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability. Quiz me. Give me one short, realistic situation at a time, with no labels, and ask me which category it fits and why. After each answer, tell me whether I am right, explain the reasoning, and pay special attention to cases on the line between an intentional tort and negligence, since that distinction is the one I most need to get sharp. Keep going until I have correctly sorted at least two examples from each category.

This prompt uses active recall: instead of re-reading definitions, you classify situations and get immediate feedback, which is how the distinctions actually stick. Asking the model to concentrate on the intentional-versus-negligence boundary aims the practice at the spot beginners confuse most.

Case Companion

I have just read the opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (1928). I am going to tell you, in my own words, the facts, what the court held, and how Cardozo’s majority and Andrews’s dissent disagree about whether the railroad owed Mrs. Palsgraf a duty. After I do, point out anything I got wrong or left out and cite the part of the opinion that supports your correction. Do not summarize the case before I respond.

Withholding the summary until after you commit to your own version turns the AI into a comprehension check rather than a substitute for reading. Requiring it to cite the opinion for each correction keeps the feedback anchored to the actual text instead of the model’s general impression of a well-known case.

Sorting Check

I am going to paste a news article and tell you which tort category I think it fits (intentional, negligence, or strict liability), the responsible party, and the one feature that put it there. Evaluate my reasoning: say whether you agree, explain why or why not, and flag if the facts could plausibly support a different category. Do not tell me the answer before I give mine, and if the article does not contain enough facts to be sure, say so rather than guessing.

Asking the model to react to your classification rather than generate one keeps you doing the analysis, and inviting it to name a plausible alternative category surfaces the genuine ambiguity in real facts. The instruction to admit when the facts are thin builds the habit of checking AI confidence against the actual evidence.

Source Skeptic

I found this news article for my tort assignment, pasted below. Before I rely on it, help me check it. Tell me what kind of source this is, whether it is reporting facts or opinion, and what important details it leaves out that I would need to confirm the tort and the responsible party. Do not accept the article’s framing automatically; point out anything an attorney would want verified before drawing a conclusion.

This prompt models verification: it treats the article as a claim to be tested rather than a fact to be trusted, which is the same discipline you apply to AI output. Spotting what a source omits is often more revealing than what it states, and it keeps you from building an analysis on a headline.