Modern tort law grew from Anglo-Saxon fines paid to settle feuds
Long before anyone separated crimes from private wrongs, Anglo-Saxon England handled most harms with payments to the victim or their clan. Weregild, charged for killing, aimed to head off blood feuds. Some deeds, like arson or treason against a lord, were beyond compensation and left the offender at the king's mercy.
After the Norman Conquest, fines went only to courts or the crown and quickly became a source of revenue. Wrongs came to be called torts or trespasses, and civil pleas split from pleas of the crown. Alfred the Great's Doom Book had already separated accidental injuries from deliberate ones and graded blame by status, age and gender. In 1166 the petty assizes were set up to protect possession of freehold land, and in the 1250s the writ of trespass became available by right rather than for a fee. The word tort itself entered legal usage in the 1580s.
Fire shaped early doctrine. In the 1401 case Beaulieu v Finglam, a person whose fire spread to a neighbour's land was held liable regardless of care, and the same strict rule applied to straying cattle, since flames could ravage communities with little means to fight them. Accidental injuries rarely appeared in court until carriages multiplied in the 18th and 19th centuries and collisions filled the records.
The modern aim is compensation rather than punishment, which is why assault can lead to both a lawsuit and a prosecution. Harm need not be physical: emotional, economic and reputational injuries all qualify, from defamation to toxic pollution. An employer can answer for an employee's carelessness, such as cleaning fluid spilled on a supermarket floor. India turned the English precedent Rylands v Fletcher into absolute liability, making hazardous enterprises answer for every accident without exception.
New Zealand went the other way. Following a 1967 Royal Commission, it replaced most personal injury lawsuits, including medical malpractice claims, with the Accident Compensation Corporation, a universal no-fault insurance scheme meant to treat victims equally whoever was to blame.
Source: Tort
