Fred Schultz Torts Law Blog on Lawyers.com

I recently had a friend ask me, “What is a tort?” This simple question made me realize that I’ve apparently been a lawyer long enough that I’m talking in “lawyer-speak” without even realizing it.  Most people don’t spend their time worrying about the difference between torts or tortes. 

Wikipedia defines the word "Tort" as follows:

“A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general. Though many acts are both torts and crimes, prosecutions for crime are mostly the responsibility of the state, private prosecutions being rarely used; whereas any party who has been injured may bring a lawsuit for tort. One who commits a tortious act is called a tortfeasor.”

Now, I realize there are far worse things that a person can be called than a “tortfeasor.” I remember in law school that we even had fun calling each other this whenever someone spilled a drink or bumped into a person in the hall.  However, the reality of tort law is that we generally deal with people whose lives have been significantly changed due to the wrongdoing or “negligence” of another person.

The practice of tort law is most often referred to as personal injury law, and we lawyers who practice in this area are usually called personal injury lawyers, that is unless our opponents use more derogatory phrases.  The truth is, though, that any person can suffer a tort.  A common example of a Tort is a car crash, where the “tortfeasor” runs a stop sign or a red light and crashes into another car, causing injury to the occupants of that vehicle.  Torts can also include other acts of injury, including defective products, negligent design or maintenance of roads and bridges, or negligent acts of medical providers.

When we talk about “Tort Reform,” we are talking about the political effort to change our tort system to make it more difficult for injured people to receive compensation and hold wrongdoers accountable.  Tort reform literally means to change the civil laws in our state or our country and modify people’s access to the third branch of government, our court system.  There are some reforms that can be positive and streamline the legal process.  However, tort reform is usually used to limit the rights of an injured person by reducing the time they have to bring a claim, placing an arbitrary limit on the amount of compensation they can receive, or even completely limit the ability to bring a claim against a “tortfeasor” by creating immunities for negligent conduct.

Usually, the demand for “tort reform” comes from the insurance industry or other industry that has an interest in trying to limit the amount of claims that are being paid out.  Most often, the phrase, “frivolous lawsuits” will be included in why they claim the law needs to be modified to limit the rights of injured people.  A frivolous lawsuit is one that has no basis in the law and no merit whatsoever.  Of course, frivolous lawsuits should not be brought or be immediately dismissed once it is clear they have no merit. However, most people simply don’t know that there are already trial rules in place to deal with frivolous lawsuits.

Moreover, no lawyer who practices tort law, a/k/a, personal injury has an interest in bringing a frivolous lawsuit because we usually work on a contingent basis.  In other words, we only get paid if we win.  If we bring cases with no merit, how on earth are we going to get paid?  Because of this, there is already a self-governing mechanism in the profession to weed out good claims from bad ones.

So, now you know what a tort is.  It’s not a torte, which is a cake.  I guess, though, that those who advocate for tort reform would like to have their cake and eat it, too.  That is, until they themselves are the victim of a tort.

Additional research compiled by Lori M. Craig, R.P.