Torts
Torts
The NextGen bar exam tests intentional torts, negligence, strict liability, products liability, and damages. Fact patterns often require identifying the duty, the breach, and whether the harm was within the risk that made the conduct negligent.
Core rules
- Intentional torts: intent, causation, and damages; battery, assault, false imprisonment, trespass, and conversion.
- Negligence: duty, breach, actual cause, proximate cause, and damages; reasonable person standard; res ipsa loquitur.
- Defenses: contributory negligence, comparative negligence, assumption of risk.
- Strict liability: abnormally dangerous activities, wild animals, and products liability.
- Products liability: defect, causation, and damages; defenses.
- Damages: compensatory, punitive, and limits on recovery.
Worked example
A driver speeds through a residential street and hits a child who darts out. The driver owes a duty of reasonable care to foreseeable plaintiffs. Speeding is a breach. Actual cause is clear. Proximate cause turns on foreseeability: a child darting out in a residential area may be foreseeable, so liability is likely. If the child was an unforeseeable plaintiff, proximate cause would fail.
Traps
Do not confuse actual cause with proximate cause. Comparative negligence reduces recovery; contributory negligence can bar it in a traditional jurisdiction. The economic loss rule limits negligence recovery for pure economic loss. The rescue doctrine can expand the scope of duty.