Tort Law

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Authors: Kirsty Horsey & Erika Rackley

Price: £27.99

Edition: 1st Edition (March 2009)

ISBN: 978-0-19-921637-6

Buy from OUP: Click Here

For both practitioners and students, there are a considerable number of excellent tort law textbooks.  Tort Law aims to be different: firstly, to provide an accessible account of what is often considered a difficult area of law and, secondly, to encourage the reader to engage in tort law.  For the reasons set out in this review. both aims are easily achieved.

Written by two experienced academics, Kirsty Horsey and Erika Rackley, Tort Law is separated into five parts: the tort of negligence; special liability regimes; personal torts; land torts; and damages and the purposes of compensation.  Each part is then sub-divided into a number of chapters.  For example, the part on the tort of negligence includes chapters on, for example, key practical topics like economic loss and causation.  Tort Law also comes with an Online Resource Centre which, by the time of this review, includes a number of excellent resources including annotated judgments, statutes and problem questions and answers to questions in the text: these are excellent.

Tort Law is surprisingly enjoyable to read with complex legal points being distilled into short and manageable sections.  It shakes off the airs and graces of other texts by using plain English and is constantly posing interesting points, and counter-points, on this vast area of law.  Being a consumer lawyer, I was extremely interested to read the chapter on product liability: often texts inadequately explain this area and refer the reader to negligence in a personal injury context (which is, in my view, entirely inadequate and inappropriate).  Not so with Tort Law.  Instead, it succinctly explains the key issues (including a brief summary of contractual obligations in sales law): an extremely welcome and refreshing change.

Being the new kid on the block in an already saturated market, Tort Law had to do a lot to stand out.  To my mind, it has: providing an engaging and thought-provoking account of the main torts.  It does not, however, consider some of the torts which are typically overlooked at undergraduate level but important in practice (like wrongful interference with goods).  That said, the torts it does cover are well-considered and are tackled in an extremely practical way.  In particular, excellent features include the "pause for reflection" and "counter-point" boxes appearing throughout the text and the annotated copies of important statutes including the Consumer Protection Act 1987.  The Online Resource Centre also provides some excellent resources.  These points, combined with its price, mean it is a serious contender as (at the very least) a secondary text to supplement the recommended text.

Reviewed on 14 March 2010

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