Graduate Diploma in Law

SCHOOL OF JUSTICE

LA3091 TORT
Campus-Based
Preston & Mauritius

Module Handbook
2020/2021

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USING THIS HANDBOOK

Welcome to GDL Tort.

The Module Team wish you a successful and enjoyable time with your studies for this
module. We hope you find the experience rewarding and intellectually enriching. The
course is designed to provide you with new challenges; to stimulate and provoke
thought; to apply what you learn within a supportive environment; and, thereby,
facilitate and contribute towards your ongoing educational development whilst at the
University.

We hope you will incorporate the IRAC study technique explicitly into your work. IRAC
stands for Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion. It is one way to structure legal analysis.
An effective essay (no matter the overall length) follows some form of the IRAC
structure where it is organised around each of these elements for each and every issue
and sub issue identified as a legal problem.

IRAC is an extremely useful tool in organising any law-related essay answer. It is not
the only way to structure an answer, but it helps to make sure all bases are covered.

This module handbook provides an overview of:

• the staff who will teach you over the coming semester
• the rationale, scope, content and structure of the module
• what we expect you to contribute by way of preparation
• the recommended reading
• the teaching and learning strategies
• the modes of assessment.

GDL Tort Module Team

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MODULE TEAM

1) Dr Kartina A. Choong
Reader in Medical Law and Ethics
Module Leader for LA3091
kachoong@uclan.ac.uk

Responsibilities:
-Module administration and co-ordination
-General module enquiries
-Facilitating distance-learning discussion sessions
-Setting and marking assessments

2) Dr Richard Saffrey-Mayger
Lecturer in Law
Rsaffrey-mayger2@uclan.ac.uk

Responsibilities:
-Conducting campus-based lectures (Preston & Mauritius)
-Facilitating seminars (Preston campus)
-Setting and marking assessments

3) Mr Neil Shee
Lecturer in Law
nshee@uclan.ac.uk

Responsibilities:
-Facilitating seminars (Mauritius campus)
-Setting and marking assessments

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MODULE

Introduction
The private law of obligations comprises a number of related branches of law such as the Law of
Contract, the Law of Tort and the Law of Restitution. These three branches regulate inter-
personal relationships and define when you are liable to another individual for loss or damage
you may have caused. Each branch protects different “personal” interests at risk when we enter
relations with others. Consequently, different branches of the private law of obligations provide
different remedies to put right any loss or damage to your private interests that may have been
caused by another person.

The English Law of Torts is a branch of private law concerned primarily with what are known as
“civil wrong” – these are unlawful interferences in another private person’s rights, such as the
right to bodily integrity, their reputation and protection of their person. These are all examples
of Torts, or “wrongs”, which can be committed against an individual’s “right”. Obviously, when
such an interference takes place, there may be damage to person caused, or inconvenience,
psychological trauma, or there may be no direct harm caused but your right has been infringed.
The legal remedies available when a Tort is committed will either compensate you for these
losses (if they can be proven) or proceedings to stop or prevent harm which is occurring (through
injunctions, for example).

Unlike Contract Law, which comprises a relatively predictable set of rules for facilitating the free
exchange of goods and services for profit, Torts can be committed in numerous ways and are
usually classified in accordance with the harm they cause: there are multiple Torts in other
words. The different legal actions protect different interests: typical claims in Tort include
Trespass to the Person (protects your right not to be physically or verbally threatened or
physically attacked or imprisoned) and Negligence (a very general action which can protect
multiple interests as it is based on the general idea of acting reasonably in accordance with some
minimum standards of carefulness).

Together, then, the legal rules which comprise Tort Law allows each of us to go about our
business day-to-day and exercise our right to make free choices safe in the knowledge that if
someone unlawfully interferes with my right to free choice, I can sue them for any harm this may
cause or take out a legal order such as an injunction to prevent them causing harm to me. These
background rules help to facilitate free choice in the private sphere. As such, there is some
overlap with another branch of law, criminal law, which also protects our freedoms, but does so
in the name of social order (hence it has a deterrent effect, because its rationale is punishment
and not, as in private law, compensation).

Scope of the Module

The Law of Torts is often described as a “dustbin” category because it includes all those legal
actions which protect our rights which are not classified as “crimes”. By its very nature it is not
a unified area of law in terms of principle and rationale. It therefore has to be studied in discrete
areas based upon the procedures for protecting particular types of personal interest which are
at risk of being unlawfully harmed. Perhaps the one Tort which may lay claim to being able to
unify Torts within a single conceptual schema is the Law of Negligence. Unlike the other

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nominate Torts – such as Trespass, Negligence does not protect one particular interest. Rather,
it comprises a number of very general principles based upon the concept of “taking reasonable”
care in the way you act and behave. These concepts are capable of being applied to many
different types of situation and protect multiple interests, such as bodily integrity (from personal
injury), psychological well-being, economic well-being, and the prevention of unnecessary
damage to property.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to the main Torts and give you a flavour of what rights
they protect, how they protect them, what remedies are available, and the similarities and
differences between these different actions. Ultimately, you should be able to advise someone
which particular Tort action will give them the best result, so weighing up the strengths and
weaknesses of each action, where applicable, is an important skill you will learn over the course
of this module.

The module will start off by looking at how a Trespass to the Person is committed. Next, we will
explore the important Tort of Negligence before moving onto a specific application of this Tort
to visitors in Occupiers’ Liability. Throughout this tour of some of the landmarks of Tort Law, we
will consider some of the remedies which are available should the Torts in question have been
committed.

The aims of this module are to:

➢ Introduce students to the framework of constituent legal principles, rules,

doctrines, concepts, cases, statutes and forms of reasoning which comprise
the English Law of Torts.

➢ Explain how a legal duty is created for recognising when an intentional or non-
intentional tort is committed against the person or property; identify relevant
legal remedies which may be claimed when a tort is committed; and advise on
any defences or other limitations which may be available.

➢ Explain how leading principles and doctrines have evolved and changed and
highlight, where appropriate, their underlying socio-economic rationale.

➢ Facilitate the acquisition of a legal vocabulary of private law concepts

associated with the Law of Torts.

➢ Develop a critical approach to legal reasoning and associated analytical skills

through the application and evaluation of legal principles to fictitious factual
scenarios both orally and in writing.

➢ Develop legal research and information retrieval skills through the use of
library and electronic legal databases.

➢ Provide a foundation of common law critical reasoning and research skills of

relevance for other law modules.
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At the end of this module, we expect you to be able to:

➢ Identify, define, explain and apply the constituent legal principles, rules and
doctrines for establishing when a legal duty in a range of Torts is created,
performed and discharged.

➢ Identify when an appropriate legal or extra-legal remedy may be claimed in

the event of a Tort being committed and assess when the remedy applies and
identify and evaluate critically the limits of such remedies.

➢ Identify social, economic and philosophical values and assumptions which

may underpin the framework of rules and explain how legal rules evolve and
change over time.

➢ Distinguish information of relevance for solving legal problems from other,

irrelevant, information.

➢ Identify and apply legal principles and rules (both common-law and statutory)
relevant for resolving practical problems where legal claims for remedies are
made.

➢ Identify, and evaluate critically, the limits of applying legal rules to resolve
problems.

➢ Acquire and apply an appropriate vocabulary of common-law concepts and

doctrines.

➢ Use law library and electronic legal databases and resources to research a
legal problem and provide evidence in support of a legal argument.

➢ Assess strengths and weaknesses of individual performance in class and

assessment tasks and identify key development needs for making appropriate
improvements.

➢ Cooperate with other students, and respect their viewpoints, in group

discussion.

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 TEACHING METHODS

The module is delivered by a weekly 2-hour lecture and a fortnightly 1-hour seminar.

Lectures
The purpose of lectures is to introduce a topic, define its scope and illustrate the
principles of law concerned through case analysis and exposition as well as the use of
illustrative examples. These provide a framework outlining the main themes and issues
of a particular topic in order to facilitate additional self-directed study and reading
thereby testing your understanding in preparation for discussion. The lecture is just
your start-point for getting into a subject area or topic and acts as stimulus and guide
to further student-led reading and research, and should not be viewed as a teaching
session which gives you “all you need to know”: it provides a basic framework only.

Seminars
Once you have attended lectures on a topic area and followed this up with guided
reading and note-taking, seminar sessions (small group discussions facilitated by a tutor)
will test what you have learnt and understood about a pre-defined topic. The
discussion questions are available in advance (on Blackboard), and discussion and
debates with your peers should take place with the tutor acting as a facilitator to
guide through the issues, arguments, and difficulties of each topic when required.

Seminars will trail behind lectures unless otherwise indicated by the lecturer, giving
you plenty of time to do your own self-directed reading, learning and note-taking.

RECOMMENDED READING
The recommended reading comprises textbooks but we would also encourage you to consider
a casebook as this could save valuable time. A ‘cases and materials’ book may also be a useful
supplement (from the library or via Trove) to the recommended text.

Recommended Textbook

K. Horsey and E. Rackley, Tort Law, 6th Edition, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Supplementary Reading

You may want to consider the following to supplement your set reading (n.b. you DO NOT have
to buy these, but you may want to dip into them now and again for alternative views/analyses
of cases, statutes, opinions, principles, developments, and context). Please use the latest
editions.

Kidner’s Casebook on Torts, Oxford University Press.

J. Cooke, Law of Tort, Pearson.

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Resources for Help with Written Work
Learning and applying law requires the application of good oral and written
communication skills. These will develop over the course of your programme but you
need to make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses in the
preparation and performance of seminars, lecture note-taking, research for your
assignment, grammar, punctuation, written English etc.

It pays to brush up on these skills, particularly the written ones - the sooner you do this
the better and the more your confidence will grow. Year after year, we find many
extremely hard-working students who attend all classes, do all the preparation required
of them and participate fully in seminars yet fail to communicate these good
thoughts and intentions in their written work gaining only moderate marks for their
efforts.

You should therefore think about the following to ensure your verbal expression does
justice to the time and effort you give to your studies. You will not receive significant
input from the School on these, so you must make the effort. Our advice is as follows:
• Buy a good dictionary (Oxford, Websters, etc)
• Buy a Law Dictionary (useful for definitions of technical phrases as well as
finding out what the abbreviations for Law Reports are)
• Buy a Rogets Thesaurus (help to expand your vocabulary and expression)
• Buy or borrow from a library a basic English book spelling out the basic rules of
(1) grammar and (2) punctuation (learn to use colons, semi-colons etc and your
written expression will improve no end in a short space of time)
• Practise problem, essay and exam questions on a frequent basis: the more
you practise the better you will get
• Prepare as fully as possible for seminars and use them to “test‟ what you
have practised using feedback to make improvements

TEACHING & LEARNING: OUR EXPECTATIONS

This module, like any law module, requires a great deal of independent study. This will
be “directed” through lecture outlines. The seminar programme will be used to refine
and develop this material and apply it to given factual situations. It is important
that you see the lectures only as a basis for this discussion and use the material in
order to develop themes within the seminar programme.

Legal Technique and Method

Learning the law takes time, patience and, above all else, practice of your application
of legal technique and method - i.e. how to find cases and statutes; critically analyse
judgements; develop a well-supported and coherent argument; give rounded advice
based on the best interpretation of the law as you see it.

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Learning the ‘Law’ Actively not Passively
Effective learning occurs through reinforcement of what you know and learning from
mistakes you make. The pedagogic value of seminars and assignments is the feedback
you will receive, enabling mistakes to be rectified and understanding enhanced. It is,
therefore, vital that you take part in discussions and prepare as fully as possible. These
will also allow you to develop confidence in articulating your views - we do not expect
“right” or “correct” answers but evidence of enthusiasm, commitment, teamwork, and
all around effort.

Your Commitment to the Course: Our Expectations

The tutor is responsible, through the lectures, for providing an introductory
framework for various topics and no more: you will not get “chapter and verse” on
topics in these, but a summary of principles and developments illustrated through
definitions and case examples. Hopefully more can be achieved through interactive
discussions in lectures and seminars. We also aim to guide you to the materials
relevant for helping you answer the questions designed to test your understanding.
There are things you will agree and disagree with. Take note of these and other
questions and use these as a basis for your reading, note-taking and questions for
discussion. The onus is on you to follow the reading and learning. You are expected to
adopt an independent approach to your time management and planning for lectures,
seminars, reading, note-taking, assignments, deadlines etc.

METHODS OF ASSESSMENT

(1) Coursework (50% weighting)

(2) Examination (50% weighting).