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The Impact of Tort Law Essay

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Tort law is a very prevalent aspect of conducting business and daily life in the twenty first century. According to the textbook, The Legal Environment of Business, tort law provides “remedies for the invasion of various protected interests.” (Cross & Miller, 2012) In this essay about tort law, I will talk about a tort case that has personally impacted me. To do so, I will provide a background of the event, apply facts of the case to applicable law, summarize lessons of the week as they relate to this case and provide a plausible argument for the parties involved. In the month of October 2011, two of my friends were exiting Fort Carson, Colorado and waited at a red light. The light turned to a green arrow and they proceeded into the …show more content…

The mental anguish that he has had to go through and the pain and suffering that he has had to endure are also grounds for compensatory damages. Chapter 12 also covers punitive damages. These damages are fines that the court may impose on the company or individual in an effort them for the neglect. The company will undoubtedly be sued for negligence. Chapter 12 section 5 states that “negligence occurs when someone suffers injury because of another’s failure to live up to a required duty of care.” (Cross & Miller, 2012) The duty of care that the driver had was to obey the traffic laws. He neglected to obey such laws which ended in an injury to the driver of the truck. There are four elements to negligence. These elements are duty of care, breach, causation and damages. Duty of Care - People are able to act freely, as long as their acts do not infringe on the rights of others. When a situation such as this accident occurs they neglect their duty of care. The driver of the dump truck had the duty of care to abide by the law and failed to do so by ignoring the red light. Breach – The driver breached his legal requirement to duty of care by failing to adhere to a red light. This breach is measured under a reasonable person standard in that any reasonable person in the same situation would have stopped at the red light rather than ignore it. A breach is simply a violation of a tort or law. Causation – Was the person’s injury caused by the

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