Torts
Torts tests civil wrongs and compensation: negligence, intentional torts, strict liability, products liability, defamation, and privacy. Ohio tort law adds comparative fault and specific statutes of limitations that can decide a case before the merits.
Core rules
- Negligence requires duty, breach, actual cause, proximate cause, and damages.
- A landowner's duty depends on the entrant's status at common law; Ohio has modified some categories, so check the call.
- Strict liability applies to abnormally dangerous activities and defective products; foreseeability and causation still matter.
- Defamation requires a false statement of fact, publication, fault, and harm to reputation; public plaintiffs need actual malice.
Worked example
D texts while driving and strikes P, a pedestrian, causing a broken leg. Reasoning: D owes P a duty of reasonable care because drivers must exercise care to foreseeable pedestrians. Texting while driving breaches that duty. Actual cause is satisfied because P would not have been hit but for D's distraction; proximate cause is satisfied because pedestrian injuries are a foreseeable result of inattentive driving. P can recover compensatory damages, reduced by P's comparative fault if any. Punitive damages require more than negligence in most jurisdictions.
Traps
- Treating proximate cause as the same as actual cause.
- Assuming the eggshell-plaintiff rule cuts off recovery.
- Applying strict liability to a products case without a defect.
- Missing the economic-loss rule in negligence.