Principles of Tort Law

i. Teaching undergraduate Torts students has enriched my understanding of just how important it is to delve into, and isolate, the principles which we, as academics, seek to convey to those students who are encountering the subject for the first time. Questions such as, ‘When should we use Bolam and when should we use Bolitho?’; ‘Is Donoghue v Stevenson's ratio still relevant?’; ‘Is the test of foreseeability the same for duty of care, breach, and remoteness?’, and literally hundreds of similar-type queries and discussion points, have been an important genesis for this book.

It is intended that this text will, primarily, have utility to the student who is studying Tort law. Students may take on board some of the principles per chapter, and omit others, in accordance with the depth and direction of study being undertaken. The book has been written in a style that incorporates presentational tools to assist the student in his or her studies, by employing frameworks for analysis per chapter, tables of legal analysis, diagrammatic depictions of the parties’ relationships in leading cases, boxes illustrating comparative judicial reasoning, and the like.

ii. Whilst in legal practice, I was frequently engaged in Tort litigation, and came to realise that exposition of principle in concise, but in-depth, treatment, is the nadir of what this area of the law should seek to achieve. After all, Tort law is there to serve society in all of its guises, to enable claimants to seek (usually compensatory) redress for their grievances, and to provide defendants with a logical set of defences to such actions. Its complexity and (occasional) opaqueness should not obscure the fact that the law should be capable of being understood by ‘the reasonable person on the London underground’ (an identity of such importance in Tort law!).