No codification of the law of torts has done more than provide a few significantly broad generalizations.
Whenever a case of negligence calls for sharp application of the objective standard, fault is as much a dogmatic fiction as is representation in the liability of the master for the torts of his servant.
Taken up by text writers on torts in the last half of that century, it had much influence in Anglo-American law.
Later the Anglo-American law of torts worked out, as a measure for those who are pursuing some affirmative course of conduct, the standard of what a reasonable, prudent man would do under the circumstances.
He was similarly liable for the torts of his slaves; but in both cases he originally possessed the singular privilege of tendering the delinquent's person in full satisfaction of the damage.
Torts then are copiously enlarged upon in primitive jurisprudence.
Corporations may also be held liable for such torts as involve a mental element, like fraud and libel.
A corporation is liable for its tortscommitted by its agents or servants in the scope of their employment.
We shall see in the chapter on torts that a tort is defined to be a breach of duty imposed by law for which a suit for damages may be maintained.
If the relationship of master and servant exists, the question arises, is the master responsible for the torts committed by his servant, resulting in injury to third parties?
It is sometimes said that a person is liable for his torts from the cradle to the grave.
We shall now consider briefly some of the more important torts and crimes.
It is also generally held that public charities, such as hospitals, and the like, are not liable for torts committed by their servants, provided they have used reasonable care in the selection of their servants.
A corporation is ordinarily liable, the same as an individual, for all torts committed by its agents in the scope of their authority.
But the tortswith which our courts are kept busy today are mainly the incidents of certain well known businesses.
Our law of torts comes from the old days of isolated, ungeneralized wrongs, assaults, slanders, and the like, where the damages might be taken to lie where they fell by legal judgment.
A corporation, as well as an individual, may committorts and crimes.
A principal is liable to third persons for his agent's torts or wrongful acts.
A partnership, like a principal in agency, is liable for the tortsor private wrongs of the individual partners, committed in the course of the partnership business.
Liability of a Corporation for itsTorts and Crimes.
Her only joint liability, is for her own torts committed without his participation, and for contracts for which the law authorizes her to unite with him.
The business of the law of torts is to fix the dividing lines between those cases in which a man is liable for harm which he has done, and those in which he is not.
And the greater part of the law of torts will be found under one or the other of those two heads.
But when the mistake was made of supposing that all cases, whether proper torts or not, in which an assumpsit was alleged, were equally founded on the promise, one of two erroneous conclusions was naturally thought to follow.
If the liability of a master for the torts of his servant had hitherto been recognized by the courts as the decaying remnant of an obsolete institution, it would not be surprising to find it confined to the cases settled by ancient precedent.
I reserve the relation between negligent and other torts for the next Lecture.
But in the criminal law and the law of torts it is of the first importance.
The liability of the master for his torts is one instance.
We learn from Gains that the same rule was applied to the torts of children or slaves, /7/ and there is some trace of it with regard to inanimate things.
Neither husband nor wife is liable for the torts of the other.
The husband is liable for torts of the wife and for slanders spoken by her, although out of his presence and without his knowledge or consent.
He is not liable for his wife's contracts with respect to her separate property, business or labor, or for torts committed by her.
A married woman may sue and be sued and make contracts in regard to her separate property, but in torts of a personal nature she must be sued jointly with her husband, although the wife may defend in her own right.
And Fessler forgot who roomed there and came up and gave them Tartarus through the keyhole and nearly dropped when Torts opened the door?
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "torts" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
