Definition of Tort
The term tort is the French equivalent of the English word ‘wrong’ and of the Roman law term ‘delict’. The word tort is derived from the Latin word tortum which means twisted or crooked or wrong and is in contrast to the word rectum which means straight. Everyone is expected to behave in a straightforward manner and when one deviates from this straight path into crooked ways he has committed a tort. Hence tort is a conduct which is twisted or crooked and not straight. As a technical term of English law, tort has acquired a special meaning as a species of civil injury or wrong. It was introduced into the English law by the Norman jurists.

Tort now means a breach of some duty independent of contract giving rise to a civil cause of action and for which compensation is recoverable. In spite of various attempts an entirely satisfactory definition of tort still awaits its master. In general terms, a tort may be defined as a civil wrong independent of contract for which the appropriate remedy is an action for unliquidated damages.

The Law of Torts In India
Under the Hindu law and the Muslim law tort had a much narrower conception than the tort of the English law. The punishment of crimes in these systems occupied a more prominent place than compensation for wrongs. The law of torts in India is mainly the English law of torts which itself is based on the principles of the common law of England. This was made suitable to the Indian conditions appeasing to the principles of justice, equity and good conscience and as amended by the Acts of the legislature. Its origin is linked with the establishment of British courts in India.

Constituents of Tort
The law of torts is fashioned as an instrument for making people adhere to the standards of reasonable behaviour and respect the rights and interests of one another. This it does by protecting interests and by providing for situations when a person whose protected interest is violated can recover compensation for the loss suffered by him from the person who has violated the same. By interest here is meant a claim, want or desire of a human being or group of human beings seeks to satisfy, and of which, therefore the ordering of human relations in civilized society must take account. It is however, obvious that every want or desire of a person cannot be protected nor can a person claim that whenever he suffers loss he should be compensated by the person who is the author of the loss. The law, therefore, determines what interests need protection and it also holds the balance when there is a conflict of protected interests.
Every wrongful act is not a tort. To constitute a tort,

# There must be a wrongful act committed by a person;
# The wrongful act must be of such a nature as to give rise to a legal remedy and
# Such legal remedy must be in the form of an action for unliquidated damages.

Important principles of tort:

1.PRINCIPLE OF DAMNUM SINE INJURIA AND INJURIA SINE DAMNUM
Damnum sine injuriais a Latin maxim which means damage without legal injury. When thereis an actual damage caused to the plaintiff without an infringement of his legal right, no action lies against the defendant. In order to make someone liable in tort, plaintiff must prove that he has sustained legal injury. Damage without injury is not actionable in the law of torts.

Injuria sine damnum is a Latin term which means legal injury without any damage. This implies an infringement of the legal rights of a person without any actual loss. Loss in this sense could mean loss of health, monetary loss etc. Since there is an infringement of legal right of a person, right to sue for a remedy is available against the wrongdoer regardless of the fact whether any actual loss is sustained or not.

2. PRINCIPLE OF VICARIOUS LIABILITY
It is a general rule that a person is responsible for his own act of omission and commission but in certain cases a person is liable for the act of others. This is known as vicarious liability.The essential elements of vicarious liability are as follows:

• There must be a relationship of a certain kind.
• The wrongful act must be related to the relationship in a certain way.
• The wrongful act must be done within the course of employment.

3.PRINCIPLE OF VOLENTI NON FIT INJURIA
The Latin maxim volenti non fit injurialiterally means “to one who volunteers, no harm is done”. A person who after knowing the risks and circumstances willingly and voluntarily consents to take the risk cannot ask for compensation for the injury resulting from it. A person who voluntarily abandons his rights cannot sue for any damage caused to him. It is used as a complete defence in the law of torts liberating the defendant from all kinds of liability.Essential elements constituting volenti non fit injuria are as follows:

• Voluntary
• Agreement (express or implied)
• Knowledge of the risk

4.PRINCIPLE OF NEGLIGENCE
Negligence is said to have been committed when a person owes a duty of care towards someone and commits a breach of duty by failing to perform it resulting in a legal damage caused to the complainant. In other words, a tort of negligence is committed when a person is injured due to the irresponsibility of another. The damage so caused must be an immediate cause of the act of negligence and not a remote cause.

Essential elements of negligence are as follows:

• Duty to take care
• Beach of such a duty
• Legal damage caused to the complainant due to a breach of duty.

5.PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL SECURITY
Principles of personal security are as follows:

ASSAULT

Assault is an act which creates in the mind of a person reasonable apprehension of a physical threat or a harm accompanied by a capacity to carry out such a threat. It is important to note that there is an absence of physical contact in assault. Essential elements of assault are as follows:

• Apprehension of harm
• Intention to use force
• Capacity to use force

BATTERY

Battery refers to a harmful, offensive and unlawful touching of a person against his will. It is an application of force to the body of another in an offensive manner. Battery is an accomplished assault.

Essential elements:

• Intention to use physical force
• Actual physical contact

FALSE IMPRISONMENT

Unlawfully restraining a person without his will by someone who does not have any legal authority to do so amounts to false imprisonment. A person may also be made liable for false imprisonment if he intentionally restricts another person’s freedom of movement without any lawful justification. Arrest of a person without any legal warrant and authority also amounts to false imprisonment.

Essential elements:

• Wilful detention
• Detention without consent
• Detention is unlawful

6.PRINCIPLE OF NUISANCE
The word nuisance is derived from the French word ‘nurie’ which means ‘to hurt’ or ‘to annoy’. Nuisance is an unlawful interference with a person’s enjoyment of land or some rights over or in connection with it.

PUBLIC NUISANCE: It is an interference with the right to enjoyment of land of a large number of people thereby causing inconvenience and annoyance. It is committed against the community at large and not any particular individual. It covers a wide variety of minor crimes that harms or threatens the safety, comfort and welfare of people at large. The extent to which the inconvenience has been caused may differ from person to person.
PRIVATE NUISANCE: It refers to an unlawful interference with a person’s use or enjoyment of his land causing inconvenience and annoyance to the person. It should be noted that while public nuisance affects the community at large, private nuisance affects an individual.

7. PRINCIPLE OF TRESPASS TO PROPERTY
Trespass to property refers to an unjustifiable physical encroachment of land of one person by another. If a person directly enters upon another person’s land without permission or remains upon the land or places any object upon the land, he is said to have committed the tort of trespass to land.

For an act of trespass to be actionable, it is necessary that the land in which the trespass has been committed must be in direct possession of the plaintiff. For example, use of camera in order to view activities on the land of another. The encroachment on plaintiff’s land should arise out of the direct consequence of the act of the defendant and not any remote or indirect cause.Also, one of the most important elements of trespass to land is the intention in the mind of the defendant not to commit trespass but to commit the act that amounts to trespass. Trespass to land is actionable per se.

8. PRINCIPLES OF REPUTATION AND PRIVACY
The principles of reputation and privacy are as follows:

DEFAMATION

Defamation means publishing false and defamatory statement about someone without any lawful justification which lowers his reputation in the eyes of the right thinking members of the society. In other words, defamation means intentional false communication either written or spoken which harms a person’s reputation.

Defamation is of two types:

 LIBEL: This is a written form of defamation which is actionable per se. Libel refers to the statement which intends to lower the reputation of another person without any lawful excuse. The statement must be in printed form capable of being reproduced like cartoons, drawings, recordings, etc.

SLANDER: Slander is an oral form of defamation where false and defamatory statements are made by words spoken or gestures which intend to lower the reputation of a person.

Essential elements of defamation are as follows:

• Statement must be published
• It must be defamatory
• It must be false
• It must refer to the plaintiff

Defences against an action for defamation are as follows:

• Statements made about a public personality
• Statements which are true
• Fair comment
• Consent of the aggrieved.

9.PRINCIPLE OF STRICT LIABILITY AND ABSOLUTE LIABILITY

STRICT LIABILITY:

At times a person may be held responsible for doing a wrong even though there had been no negligence on his part or no intention to do such wrong or even if he had taken necessary steps to prevent such a wrong from happening. This is known as the principle of strict liability and is based on a no fault theory. The principle of strict liability was first laid down in the landmark case of Ryland’s v. Fletcher.

“ Anyone who in the course of “non-natural” use of his land “accumulates” thereon for his own purposes anything likely to do mischief  if it escapes is answerable for all direct damage thereby caused. It imposes strict liability on certain areas of nuisance law.”

ABSOLUTE LIABILITY:

Absolute liability is a stricter form of strict liability. It refers to the no fault theory liability in which the wrongdoer is held absolutely liable for the act of omission or commission without any defences which are available to the rule of strict liability. It is applicable only to those people who are involved in hazardous or inherently dangerous activity whereby they become absolutely liable to full compensation for the harm caused to anyone resulting from the operation of such hazardous activity. The rule of absolute liability was first laid down in M.C Mehta v. Union of India (Oleum gas case).

10. POSITION OF MINORS IN LAW OF TORT
In India, a minor is a person who is below the age of 18 years. They can sue just like adults but through their parents and can also be sued like adults if they are old enough to form an intention to commit a tort.

CAPACITY TO SUE

A minor can sue for any wrong done to him through his ‘litigation friend’ who usually is his father. A minor may even sue his parents for a negligent act. A child who sustained injury while in the mother’s womb can also sue the guilty after coming to the world.

CAPACITY TO BE SUED

A minor is generally not capable of being sued if he commits a tort since he is incapable of reimbursing damages, but in most of the cases he can be sued just like an adult. Also, a minor can be sued for contributory negligence.

PARENTS LIABILITY FOR A MINORS TORT

Parents could be held liable for the tort committed by their children if they owed a direct duty of care towards their child while he committed the tort. They are responsible for their children’s action the same way as the employers are responsible for the harmful action of their employees.

 Remedy

The law of torts is said to be a development of the maxim ‘ubi jus ibi remedium’ or ‘there is no wrong without a remedy’. If a man has a right, he must of necessity have a means to vindicate and maintain it and a remedy if he is injured in the exercise or enjoyment of it; and indeed it is a vain thing to imagine a right without remedy; want of right and want of remedy are reciprocal.

Where there is no legal remedy there is no wrong. But even so the absence of a remedy is evidence but is not conclusive that no right exists.
Some General Conditions In Torts

1. Act And Omission- To constitute a tort there must be a wrongful act, whether of omission or commission, but not such acts as are beyond human control and as are entertained only in thoughts. An omission is generally not actionable but it is so exceptionally. Where there is a duty to act an omission may create liability. A failure to rescue a drowning child is not actionable, but it is so where the child is one’s own. A person who voluntarily commences rescue cannot leave it half the way. A person may be under duty to control natural happenings to his own land so as to prevent them from encroaching others’ land.

2. Voluntary and Involuntary Acts- a voluntary act has to be distinguished from an involuntary act because the former may involve liability and the latter may not. A self willed act like an encroachment fro business, is voluntary, but an encroachment for survival may be involuntary. The wrongfulness of the act and the liability for it depends upon legal appreciation of the surrounding circumstances.

3. Malice- malice is not essential to the maintenance of an action for tort. It is of two kinds, ‘express malice’ (or malice in fact or actual malice) and ‘malice in law’ (or implied malice). The first is what is called malice in common acceptance and means ill will against a person; the second means a wrongful act done intentionally without just cause or excuse. Where a man has a right to do an act, it is not possible to make his exercise of such right actionable by alleging or proving that his motive in the exercise was spite or malice in the popular sense. An act, not otherwise unlawful, cannot generally be made actionable by an averment that it was done with evil motive. A malicious motive per se does not amount to injuria or legal wrong.
Wrongful acts of which malice is an essential element are:
# Defamation,
# Malicious prosecution,
# Willful and malicious damage to property,
# Maintenance, and
# Slander of title.

4. Intention, motive, negligence and recklessness- The obligation to make reparation for damage caused by a wrongful act arises from the fault and not from the intention. Any invasion of the civil rights of another person is in itself a legal wrong, carrying with it liability to repair it necessary or natural consequences, in so far as these are injurious to the person whose right is infringed, whether the motive which prompted it be good, bad or indifferent. A thing which is not a legal injury or wrong is not made actionable by being done with a bad intent. It is no defence to an action in tort for the wrong doer to plead that he did not intend to cause damage, if damage has resulted owing to an act or omission on his part which is actively or passively the effect of his volition. A want of knowledge of the illegality of his act or omission affords no excuse, except where fraud or malice is the essence of that act or omission. For every man is presumed to intend and to know the natural and ordinary consequences of his acts. This presumption is not rebutted merely by proof that he did not think of the consequences or hoped or expected that they would not follow. The defendant will be liable for the natural and necessary consequences of his act, whether he in fact contemplated them or not.

5. Malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance- the term ‘malfeasance’ applies to the commission of an unlawful act. It is generally applicable to those unlawful acts, such as trespass, which are actionable per se and do not require proof of negligence or malice. The term ‘misfeasance’ is applicable to improper performance of some lawful act. The term ‘non-feasance’ applies to the failure or omission to perform some act which there is an obligation to perform.

6. Fault- liability for tort generally depends upon something done by a man which can be regarded as a fault fro the reason that it violates another man’s right. But liability may also arise without fault. Such liability is known as absolute or strict liability. An important example is the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher thus the two extremes of the law of tort are of non liability even where there is fault or liability without fault. Between these two extremes is the variety of intentional and negligent wrongs to the question whether there is any consistent theory of liability, all that can be said is that it wholly depends upon flexible public policy, which in turn is a reflection of the compelling social needs of the time.

Conclusion
Thus to conclude, law of torts is a branch of law which resembles most of the other branches in certain aspects, but is essentially different from them in other respects. Although there are differences in opinion among the different jurists regarding the liability in torts, the law has been developed and has made firm roots in the legal showground. There are well defined elements and conditions of liability in tort law.