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TORT12 topics386 practice questions

NextGen Bar Exam Torts.

Intentional torts, negligence, strict and products liability, and damages.

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All 12 topics in Torts

Scope-aligned

★ marks the 9 topics NCBE flags at memorize level — know these cold; the rest lean on provided materials and reasoning.

  1. 01

    Intentional Torts & Defenses★

    Intentional torts and their defenses: harms to the person (assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress) and to property interests (trespass to land, trespass to chattels, conversion); the intent element and transferred intent; and defenses including consent, self-defense, defense of others and property, recapture of chattels, and necessity.

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  2. 02

    Duty & Special Relationships★

    The duty of care to foreseeable and unforeseeable plaintiffs: nonfeasance and affirmative duties (special relationships, voluntary undertakings, the duty to control third parties), the duties of owners and occupiers of land, negligent infliction of emotional distress (zone of danger, bystander), and pure economic loss.

  3. 03

    Standard of Care & Negligence Per Se★

    The standard of care: the reasonably prudent person and the standards applied to children, physically and mentally impaired persons, professionals, and those acting in emergencies; and rules of conduct derived from statutes (negligence per se) and the relevance of custom.

  4. 04

    Res Ipsa & Proof★

    Proving fault with direct and circumstantial evidence, including the conditions for res ipsa loquitur (an incident of a type that does not ordinarily occur without negligence, an instrumentality under the defendant’s exclusive control).

  5. 05

    Causation★

    Actual causation (the but-for test, the substantial-factor test, and multiple necessary or sufficient causes) and proximate causation (foreseeability, the scope-of-the-risk test, and intervening and superseding causes).

  6. 06

    Comparative Fault & Others' Acts★

    Liability for the acts of others (parental responsibility and nondelegable duties), pure and modified comparative negligence including secondary implied assumption of risk, and express assumption of risk.

  7. 07

    Strict Liability★

    Common-law strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities: the common types of such activities, who may sue and be sued, the requirement that the harm arise from the risk that made the activity dangerous, and defenses including comparative negligence.

  8. 08

    Products Liability★

    Products liability based on the design, manufacture, and distribution of products: the theories of liability, the types of defects (manufacturing defect, design defect, and failure to warn), who may sue and be sued, and defenses to such claims.

  9. 09

    Nuisance★

    Private nuisance (unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land, the locality rule, and the distinctions among private nuisance, trespass, and public nuisance) and public nuisance, together with defenses to such claims.

  10. 10

    Misrepresentation

    Fraudulent misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation, and defenses to such claims.

  11. 11

    Defamation & Privacy

    Defamation (both common-law and constitutional aspects) and the privacy torts — intrusion upon seclusion, public disclosure of private facts, appropriation of name or likeness, and false-light publicity — together with defenses to such claims.

  12. 12

    Damages

    Apportionment of responsibility among multiple tortfeasors (joint and several liability) and the categories of recoverable damages — compensatory (general and special), punitive, and nominal — including the thin-skull rule, the duty to mitigate, and statutory limitations on recovery.

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4 sample TORT questions

Real questions from the Torts bank, with the full explanation. The paid bank covers all 12 topics and difficulty levels.

A worker on a warehouse floor decides to play a joke on a coworker. As the coworker begins to lower himself onto a rolling stool, the worker yanks the stool away, certain the coworker will drop onto the concrete. The worker means only to get a laugh from the others and hopes no real harm comes of it, but the coworker lands hard and fractures his tailbone. The coworker sues for battery. The worker defends that he never wanted to injure anyone and intended nothing more than a harmless prank.

Is the worker liable for battery despite not wanting to cause any injury?

  1. No, because he did not desire to bring about a harmful contact.
  2. No, because his lighthearted, well-meaning motive negates the intent battery requires.
  3. Yes, because he was substantially certain the coworker would strike the floor. Correct
  4. Yes, because any prank that happens to cause an injury is a battery.
Why: Battery's intent element is satisfied by purpose OR knowledge to a substantial certainty that a harmful or offensive contact will result, and it attaches to the contact itself, not the ultimate injury. The worker was certain the coworker would hit the concrete, so intent is present even though he wanted only a laugh — C. A misreads the test: desire is one route to intent, but substantial certainty is an independent route, so not wanting the harm does not save him. B is the classic trap — a playful or benign motive is irrelevant once the defendant intends the contact. D reaches the right result by the wrong path and sweeps too broadly: liability turns on intent to cause the contact (here, substantial certainty), not on the bare fact that a joke produced an injury.

At a family gathering, a five-year-old grows annoyed that an elderly guest took the last cookie. As the guest starts to sit down at the dining table, the child deliberately drags the chair away, wanting the guest to drop to the floor. The guest falls and fractures her hip. She sues the child for battery. The child's parents respond that a five-year-old is far too young to be held responsible for an intentional tort and cannot really understand that pulling the chair was a wrongful thing to do.

Can the child be held liable for battery?

  1. Yes, because the child in fact intended the guest's contact with the floor. Correct
  2. Yes, because parents are automatically liable for their children's intentional torts.
  3. No, because a child under seven cannot form tortious intent as a matter of law.
  4. No, because the child did not appreciate that pulling the chair was wrongful.
Why: There is no minimum age for intentional-tort liability; a child is liable if she actually formed the required intent — desiring the contact or knowing it was substantially certain. This child dragged the chair away wanting the guest to fall, so she intended the contact and committed a battery — A. C invents an immunity that does not exist: courts ask only whether this defendant had the intent, not whether she was old enough in some abstract sense. D misstates the element — what matters is intent to cause the contact, not an appreciation that the act was wrong; not grasping wrongfulness is no defense. B misstates who is liable: the liability here is the child's own, and parents are not automatically vicariously liable for a child's intentional torts, though a statute or their own negligence might separately reach them.

At a gallery opening, an art critic becomes irritated with a server who is slow to bring him a drink. To make a point, the critic snatches the serving tray straight out of the server's hands and slams it down onto a table. He never touches the server's body, and the server is not physically hurt, only humiliated in front of the crowd. The server sues the critic for battery. The critic responds that he never laid a finger on the server and that the server suffered no injury at all.

Is the critic's conduct a battery?

  1. No, because the critic never made contact with the server's body.
  2. Yes, because seizing an object the server held is a contact with him. Correct
  3. No, because the server suffered no physical injury from the encounter.
  4. Yes, because the critic acted from a hostile, ill-tempered motive.
Why: Battery reaches contact with anything closely connected to the plaintiff's body — a held object, clothing, a cane — as though it were the body itself. Snatching the tray from the server's hands is thus a contact with the server's person, and because it would offend a reasonable sense of dignity, it is an offensive battery — B. A misunderstands 'contact': skin-to-skin touching is not required when the defendant grabs what the plaintiff is holding. C misstates the harm rule — an offensive battery requires no physical injury; the affront to dignity is the wrong. D reaches the right outcome for the wrong reason: a hostile motive is not what makes this a battery, since motive is irrelevant — the offensive contact with a closely connected object is. The server can recover without showing any bruise.

During a heated argument in a parking lot, a large man draws back his fist and lunges at a smaller woman as if to punch her, stopping his fist inches from her face. The woman is not frightened in the slightest — she is trained in self-defense and certain she could block any blow — but she plainly sees the fist coming and expects to be struck. She sues the man for assault. He argues that there was no assault because she admits she was never actually afraid of him for a moment.

Is the man liable to the woman for assault?

  1. Yes, because she reasonably expected an imminent contact, fear aside. Correct
  2. Yes, because his fist came within mere inches of striking her face.
  3. No, because the woman felt no fear of the man at any point.
  4. No, because he never completed an actual contact with her body.
Why: Assault requires a reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact, and 'apprehension' means awareness or expectation of the contact — not fright. A confident, unafraid plaintiff who perceives an imminent blow is still assaulted, so the man is liable — A. C states the classic trap: courts distinguish apprehension from fear, and the absence of fear is no defense. D confuses assault with battery — assault protects against the apprehension itself and needs no completed contact, so the lack of a blow does not defeat it. B identifies a true fact but the wrong reason: liability rests on her reasonable expectation of imminent contact, not on the number of inches the fist stopped away; a menacing gesture from farther off could equally suffice if imminence and apprehension are present.
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Common questions

Torts FAQs

Intentional torts, negligence, strict and products liability, and damages. The published content scope breaks it into 12 topics, examined through both MCQ formats plus integrated question sets and performance tasks.
12. Our notes are mapped one-to-one against NCBE's published content scope, and starred topics mark what NCBE flags at memorize level.
Active recall beats re-reading. Read the notes once, then practice exam-format questions in mixed order, then revisit weak topics. Our weak-area tracker surfaces the topics dragging your accuracy down.
Yes. The free diagnostic quiz is open to everyone, free accounts get the first topic of every subject — notes included — plus 5 premium questions a day. The full TORT bank (386 questions today) is unlocked with a one-time purchase and covered by the 14-day money-back guarantee.
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