Tort Law Lectures
Negligence, economic loss, occupiers' liability, causation, and remedies for tort law exams.
These tort law lectures are built to help students move from duty to breach to causation without losing policy context. The emphasis is on structuring analysis clearly and distinguishing established duty categories from novel duty arguments.
What these lectures cover
Negligence, duty of care, breach, factual and legal causation, and remoteness.
Pure economic loss, negligent misstatement, psychiatric harm, and omission problems.
Occupiers' liability, nuisance, trespass, product liability, and vicarious liability.
Defences, contribution, damages, injunctions, and public policy limits on liability.
Authority checkpoints
- Donoghue v Stevenson for the neighbour principle and duty foundations.
- Caparo Industries v Dickman for novel duty analysis and incremental reasoning.
- Hedley Byrne v Heller for negligent misstatement and assumption of responsibility.
- Wagon Mound and Chester v Afshar style reasoning for remoteness and causation framing.
How to use these notes in exams
- State the tort first and avoid collapsing negligence, nuisance, and product liability into one discussion.
- Use one sentence for each stage of the negligence chain: duty, breach, causation, remoteness, and defences.
- If the facts suggest policy-based restraint, say so expressly instead of treating the dispute as ordinary personal injury only.
Next steps
Move from lecture notes into questions and case work while the rules are still fresh.