Mani Ellis & Layne Accident & Injury Lawyers | October 2, 2025 | Personal Injury
If you’ve been hurt and are researching your legal options for compensation, you’ll quickly run into two phrases that sound similar but aren’t identical: tort law and personal injury. Understanding how they overlap and where they differ can help you figure out which rules apply to your situation and what kind of claim you may have.
What Is Tort Law?
At its core, tort law is the broad body of civil rules that allows people to seek compensation when someone else’s conduct causes harm.
In a tort case, the injured party seeks monetary damages or other civil remedies from the responsible party. Torts include intentional wrongs (such as assault or defamation), negligence (carelessness), and strict liability (liability without requiring proof of fault, as in some product defect cases).
There are many types of torts:
- Intentional torts: Harm caused by intentional wrongful behavior, such as assault or false imprisonment
- Negligent torts: When someone causes harm by failing to exercise reasonable care
- Strict liability torts: When someone is legally responsible for harm, even if their behavior was not careless or intentional
- Property torts: Harm caused to the property of another person. Examples include trespassing and nuisance, or unreasonable interference with someone’s use and enjoyment of their property.
- Business torts: Financial harm, such as tortious interference or fraud
- Dignitary torts: Harm to the reputation, rights, or dignity of someone else, such as privacy invasion
Think of tort law as an umbrella: it covers many types of wrongful conduct that result in harm to a person, reputation, or property. Personal injury fits under that umbrella.
What Is Personal Injury Law?
Personal injury focuses on physical and psychological harm to a person, typically caused by negligence.
Car crashes, slip and fall accidents, unsafe premises, dog bites, medical negligence, and dangerous products are common examples. The aim is to make the injured person “whole” by compensating for damages, including medical bills, lost income, physical and emotional suffering, and other losses.
When someone brings a personal injury tort, they’re usually alleging that another party’s negligence, recklessness, or intentional conduct caused them bodily or emotional injury. In other words, personal injury is a category within torts that focuses on harm to individuals, rather than damage to property or reputation alone.
Torts vs. Personal Injury: Key Differences
Here are important differences between tort and personal injury law.
Scope
Torts and personal injury law are related but not synonymous. All personal injury claims are torts, but not all torts are personal injury.
Type of Harm
Personal injury centers on physical and mental harm to a person. Tort law includes injuries to property and intangible interests like privacy or reputation, in addition to bodily injury.
Elements to Prove
Many personal injury claims rely on negligence, which typically requires proving four elements:
- Duty of care: The defendant owed a responsibility to act with care (e.g., drivers must follow traffic laws).
- Breach of duty: They failed to act as a reasonably prudent person would.
- Causation: The breach directly caused the injury (both factual and legal/proximate causation).
- Damages: You suffered real losses.
Other torts may require different elements, such as intent for battery or falsity and fault for defamation.
Damages
Personal injury cases focus on compensatory damages. These come in two forms. Economic damages encompass financial losses, including medical expenses, rehabilitation costs, lost wages, and out-of-pocket expenses. Non-economic damages encompass more personal losses, including physical pain, emotional anguish, and a loss of quality of life.
Some cases may allow punitive damages to deter especially egregious conduct.
Damages may be different in torts without bodily injury. They may focus on lost revenue or business opportunities, costs to mitigate harm, or reputational damage. Other types of tort may seek other remedies, like injunctions to demand that parties perform specific actions or stop certain conduct.
Statute of Limitations
The deadline to file a lawsuit depends on the type of tort. In Ohio, personal injury cases usually have a two-year statute of limitations. For other types of tort, the deadline may range from one year for tortious interference to four years for trespassing and five years for fraud.
Contact Our Columbus Personal Injury Lawyers for a Free Consultation
Tort law is the broad field of civil wrongs that provides remedies for harms caused by others. Personal injury is a smaller area of law focusing on harm to people. By seeing personal injury as a focused slice of the larger tort system, you can better navigate the system and pursue the compensation the law allows when someone causes you harm.
For more information, please contact an experienced lawyer at Mani Ellis & Layne Accident & Injury Lawyers to schedule a free initial consultation today. We have convenient locations in Columbus, OH, and Charleston, WV.
Mani Ellis & Layne Accident & Injury Lawyers – Columbus, OH Office
20 E Broad St Suite 1000, Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 587-8423
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Mani Ellis & Layne Accident & Injury Lawyers – Charleston, WV Office
10 Hale St Suite 501, Charleston, WV 25301
(304) 720-1000
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