The Importance Of Tort Law

1811 Words8 Pages

Tort Law and the right to Privacy In order for a claim to be tortuous in liability in negligence to be actionable, primarily, certain fundamental pre-requisites need to be established in each respectively. The requirements of the modern tort negligence were stated by Lord Wright in, Lochgelly and Coal Co ltd Vs McMullan, as being, the existence of a duty of care owned by the defendant to the claimant, a breach of duty, and damage or injury caused by that breach of duty (2013). A tort is a wrong or injury caused by an individual for which the victim can seek compensation. Some torts are also crime, and the person committing the tort can be prosecuted in criminal court. But most torts are not crimes; instead they are defined as “civil wrong, …show more content…

Such crucial decisions may concern faith, moral values, political affiliation, marriage, procreation, or death. The federal constitution guarantees the right of individuals to make these decisions according to their own conscience and beliefs. The government is not constitutionally permitted to regulate such deeply personal matters. The right of privacy protected by the Constitution gained a foothold in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. (1965), in which the Supreme Court struck down a state statute forbidding married adults from using birth control because the statute violated the sanctity of the marital bedroom. Acknowledging that the Constitution does not mention the word privacy anywhere in its text, the Court held that a general right to privacy may be inferred from the express language of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as from the interests protected by them. In addition to the Constitution's expressed protections of certain aspects of privacy, the Supreme Court has also held that there are additional privacy rights implied within the Constitution. Since the early twentieth century, the Court has recognized certain zones of privacy that hover around the more precisely suggested guarantees within the Bill of Rights. In a series of cases …show more content…

Breach of confidence was traditionally founded upon the unauthorized use of information of a confidential nature when the defendant was considered to be under a duty of confidentiality (2013). In Attorney General Vs Guardian Newspapers Ltd (No. 2), it was found by Lord Goff (1988) that where individuals took confidential information which was not necessarily the subject of express or impliedly confidentiality, an action in breach of confidence could be founded. A duty of confidence would arise when confidential information comes into of someone who either knew the information was confidential or had agreed that it would remain confidential and in all the circumstances of the case the courts should preclude disclosure of that information. In Hellen well vs CC Derbyshire (2013), it was held that were a defendant had taken a photograph of someone engaged in a private act, then the law would consider its publication within the breach of confidence on a parallel with stealing a letter or a diary. The courts developed their case law away from requiring a prior existing relationship to allowing breaches of confidence in cases without the need for an express or implied confidentiality clause, allowing cases to succeed in

Open Document