Tort Laws Case Study

According to Henry Cheeseman, author of Business Law, tort is a French word that means “wrong”. The law provides remedies to those individuals and organizations that are injured by the tortuous actions of others (Cheeseman, 2010). There are several different kinds of torts that a company must be familiar with. The ones that will be discussed in this paper will relate to Alumina and their scenario.

Alumina is facing a possible lawsuit brought on by an individual, Ms. Bates, claiming Alumina’s failure to comply with EPA standards has caused her daughter’s leukemia. Alumina has had one previous EPA violation which they immediately corrected. There are a few common torts which Ms. Bates could use in her claim of wrongdoing. Each one can be managed and mitigated in its own way.

The first tort that Ms. Bates could use is that of negligence. Negligence is the “omission to do something which a reasonable man would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do (Cheeseman 2010).” There are certain criteria that must be met in order for a plaintiff to win a negligence claim. The first is that the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff; the second is that this duty of care was breached, and thirdly, the plaintiff suffered injury which was caused by the negligent act, both causation in fact and legal cause (Cheeseman, 2010). Alumina must rid itself of hazardous waste; there is no way around that. However, they must do it in a manner that meets or exceeds the guidelines as set forth by the EPA. One way to answer the allegations brought forth by Bateman would be to request any reports or tests conducted by the EPA over the last five years and publish them in order to show compliance.

A recent example of negligence and breach of duty of care is that of the BP oil spill. A few weeks ago there was an explosion off the coast of Louisiana on one of BP’s oil rigs. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of...