SQE1 Tort Law Revision Guide: Key Cases, Tests, and Exam Strategy

Why Tort Is Deceptively Question-Heavy on SQE1

Tort looks, at first glance, like one of the softer landings on the SQE1. The concepts are intuitive, the fact patterns feel familiar, and most candidates have met Donoghue v Stevenson before they have met Pinnel's Case. That sense of familiarity is exactly the trap. The SRA does not reward you for recognising the shape of a negligence claim — it rewards you for identifying, with precision, which element of which tort is being tested and selecting the single best answer from five carefully written options.

Tort on the SQE1 is question-heavy for three reasons. First, every fact pattern can plausibly hide two or three torts stacked on top of each other — a delivery driver who hits a cyclist on private property where the landowner failed to maintain the fence might involve negligence, occupiers' liability, and vicarious liability in the same scenario. Second, the case law moves: the post-Robinson approach to duty of care has quietly rewritten the Caparo script most candidates learned at university. Third, subsidiary torts — psychiatric injury, pure economic loss, private nuisance — all sit inside the same five-option format as the headline negligence questions, and they are where the marks are quietly won and lost.

This guide walks you through the whole SQE1 tort syllabus in the order a candidate actually needs it: framework first, then the tricky extensions, then defences and remedies. Along the way, we have tied the doctrine to real citations so you can recognise the cases that examiners expect you to know on sight. For deeper drilling, pair this guide with our tort law study materials and our tort flashcards.

The SQE1 Tort Syllabus

Tort is tested in the Functioning Legal Knowledge 1 (FLK1) paper alongside Contract, Business Law, Dispute Resolution, and the Legal System. You can read the official specification on the SRA's assessment information page. It is worth downloading because it tells you precisely which sub-topics are fair game.

The SRA's spec covers:

• Negligence — duty of care, breach, causation (factual and legal), remoteness, and defences
• Psychiatric harm — primary and secondary victims
• Pure economic loss — negligent misstatement, assumption of responsibility
• Employers' liability
• Occupiers' liability — under the Occupiers' Liability Acts 1957 and 1984
• Product liability — at common law and under the Consumer Protection Act 1987
• Nuisance and the rule in Rylands v Fletcher
• Vicarious liability for the torts of employees and others
• Defences — contributory negligence, volenti, illegality, consent, necessity
• Remedies — damages and injunctions

Questions are single best answer multiple-choice questions (SBAs). Each scenario is followed by five options; you select the best one. There is no negative marking, so always answer every question. You have roughly 1 minute 45 seconds per question, and tort questions often involve longer fact patterns than other FLK1 subjects, so pace matters.

If you have already worked through our SQE1 contract law revision guide or our SQE1 land law revision guide, the approach below will feel familiar: build the framework, memorise the cases that anchor each step, then practise applying the test to unfamiliar facts.

Negligence: The Four-Element Framework

Negligence is by far the most tested tort on the SQE1. Almost every tort question either starts with negligence or can be resolved by asking whether the defendant owed the claimant a duty of care, breached it, and caused foreseeable damage. If you can run the four-element framework reliably under time pressure, you will pass most tort questions without needing to reason from first principles.

The four elements are:

1. Duty of care — did the defendant owe the claimant a duty?
2. Breach of duty — did the defendant fall below the standard of care?
3. Causation — did the breach cause the claimant's loss, in fact and in law?
4. Damage — is the damage of a type the law recognises and is it not too remote?

Duty of Care: Caparo, Robinson, and the Modern Position

The starting point is Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, the case every candidate knows. Lord Atkin's "neighbour principle" — you must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions that would foreseeably injure your neighbour — is the foundation on which modern negligence is built. You can read the original decision on BAILII.

For most of the post-1990 era, the test for duty was the three-stage test from Caparo Industries v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605:

• Foreseeability of harm
• Proximity between claimant and defendant
• Whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty

Caparo is still cited, but the Supreme Court's decision in Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2018] UKSC 4 significantly narrowed when it applies. Lord Reed held that the Caparo three-stage test is not a universal test for all duty-of-care questions. Where an established duty category already exists — road users to other road users, doctors to patients, manufacturers to consumers — the court simply applies that established duty. The three-stage Caparo analysis is reserved for novel cases, where no precedent governs and the court is asked to extend the law incrementally by analogy.

For the SQE1, the practical rule is:

• If the scenario fits an established category, the duty is uncontroversial — do not waste time running Caparo.
• If the scenario is novel (pure economic loss caused by a statement, psychiatric harm to a bystander, an omission by a public authority), run the Caparo three-stage test and consider the policy factors.

Candidates who miss the Robinson update often over-apply Caparo and get lured into plausible-but-wrong options.

Breach: The Standard of Care

Once a duty is established, the question is whether the defendant breached it. The standard is objective — that of the reasonable person carrying out the activity in question (Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks (1856) 11 Ex 781).

Key variations:

• Professionals are judged by the standard of a reasonably competent member of their profession. The Bolam test (Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582) asks whether the defendant acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of opinion. Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232 added a logical check: the body of opinion must withstand logical analysis.
• Learner drivers are judged by the standard of a reasonably competent, qualified driver, not a learner (Nettleship v Weston [1971] 2 QB 691). This is harsh but consistent — the public should not bear the risk of inexperience.
• Children are judged by the standard of a reasonably careful child of the same age (Mullin v Richards [1998] 1 WLR 1304).
• Emergencies lower the standard — the defendant is judged in light of the pressure they faced (Watt v Hertfordshire County Council [1954] 1 WLR 835).
• Sport is judged by the standard of a reasonable competitor; the threshold for breach is higher because participants accept the ordinary risks of play (Condon v Basi [1985] 1 WLR 866).

Factors the court weighs when deciding whether the defendant fell below the standard:

• Magnitude of the risk (likelihood and seriousness of harm)
• Cost and practicality of precautions
• Social utility of the activity (Watt, above)
• Common practice in the trade or profession

Causation: Factual and Legal

Causation is the element the SQE1 most often tests in disguise. You need both factual causation and legal causation (remoteness) to succeed.

Factual causation is usually established by the "but-for" test: but for the defendant's breach, would the claimant have suffered the loss? The canonical illustration is Barnett v Chelsea & Kensington Hospital Management Committee [1969] 1 QB 428, where a doctor's failure to examine a patient was a breach but not a cause — the patient would have died of arsenic poisoning regardless.

Where the but-for test fails because of scientific uncertainty or multiple causes, the courts apply variations:

• Material contribution to harm — Bonnington Castings Ltd v Wardlaw [1956] AC 613. Where the harm is divisible and the defendant's breach materially contributed to it, liability attaches to that contribution.
• Material contribution to risk — McGhee v National Coal Board [1973] 1 WLR 1 and Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services [2002] UKHL 22. In exceptional cases (classically mesothelioma from asbestos), where the but-for test cannot be satisfied because of scientific uncertainty about which exposure caused the disease, a defendant who materially increased the risk of that harm can be liable.
• Loss of a chance — generally not recoverable in personal injury (Gregg v Scott [2005] UKHL 2), though the position differs in economic loss cases.

Legal causation asks whether anything has broken the chain. A novus actus interveniens can be an intervening act of the claimant (if unreasonable), a third party (if highly unforeseeable), or a natural event. The threshold is high — the courts are reluctant to let defendants off the hook for foreseeable consequences of their breach.

Remoteness is governed by Overseas Tankship (UK) Ltd v Morts Dock & Engineering Co (The Wagon Mound (No 1)) [1961] AC 388. The defendant is liable only for damage of a reasonably foreseeable kind. The precise extent and manner of the damage need not be foreseeable — only the type (Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963] AC 837). The "eggshell skull" rule (Smith v Leech Brain & Co [1962] 2 QB 405) means the defendant takes their victim as they find them; if a type of harm is foreseeable, its extent is recoverable even if unusually severe.

For relentless practice on negligence questions under time pressure, start with our quick quiz.

Psychiatric Injury

Psychiatric injury is one of the narrowest and most tested sub-topics on SQE1 tort. The law distinguishes sharply between primary and secondary victims, and the control mechanisms for secondary victims come from Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire [1992] 1 AC 310.

The claimant must have suffered a recognised psychiatric illness (e.g. clinical depression, PTSD) — grief, distress, or ordinary anxiety is not enough.

Rescuers are not a separate category. They must fit into the primary victim rules if they were in physical danger (White v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire [1999] 2 AC 455).

SQE1 trap: questions often describe a relative watching a live broadcast of a disaster. Under Alcock, television images (unless showing individual suffering in breach of broadcasting guidelines) do not usually satisfy the "own unaided senses" requirement.

Pure Economic Loss

Pure economic loss — financial loss not flowing from physical injury or property damage — is not generally recoverable in negligence. The main exception is negligent misstatement under Hedley Byrne & Co Ltd v Heller & Partners Ltd [1964] AC 465.

The modern test focuses on assumption of responsibility. A duty is owed where:

• The defendant possessed a special skill relevant to the statement
• The defendant knew, or ought to have known, that the claimant would rely on the statement
• It was reasonable for the claimant to rely on it
• The defendant did not effectively disclaim responsibility

Caparo v Dickman itself was a pure economic loss case — the auditors owed no duty to individual investors who bought shares in reliance on a statutory audit. The proximity was insufficient.

Spartan Steel & Alloys Ltd v Martin & Co [1973] QB 27 illustrates another key point: physical damage is recoverable, the consequential economic loss flowing directly from that damage is recoverable, but pure economic loss (lost profit on production that did not happen at all) is not.

SQE1 trap: watch for gratuitous statements at social occasions. The assumption of responsibility is usually missing, unless the facts indicate otherwise (Chaudhry v Prabhakar [1989] 1 WLR 29 is the counter-example).

Occupiers' Liability

Occupiers' liability is governed by two statutes that divide along a simple line: the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 protects lawful visitors; the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 governs duties to trespassers. You can read both on legislation.gov.uk — OLA 1957 and OLA 1984.

The "occupier" is the person with sufficient control over the premises (Wheat v E Lacon & Co Ltd [1966] AC 552). There can be more than one occupier.

Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2003] UKHL 47 is the leading case on obvious dangers. A visitor who dived into a shallow lake after ignoring warning signs could not recover — the danger was obvious and the occupier owed no duty to protect adults from the consequences of their own free choices. The House of Lords emphasised that imposing liability would reduce the amenity enjoyed by the many responsible users.

SQE1 trap: a lawful visitor who goes beyond the scope of their permission becomes a trespasser for that activity, and the 1984 Act (not the 1957 Act) applies.

Vicarious Liability

Vicarious liability makes an employer strictly liable for the torts of an employee committed in the course of their employment. The SQE1 tests it relentlessly, and the law has moved significantly over the last decade.

Two stages:

1. Is the relationship one of employment, or akin to employment?
2. Is there a sufficient connection between the wrongful act and the relationship?

Stage 1: The Relationship

The traditional test distinguished employees (contract of service) from independent contractors (contract for services). The Supreme Court in Cox v Ministry of Justice [2016] UKSC 10 extended vicarious liability to relationships "akin to employment" — in that case, a prison kitchen where inmates worked. The question is whether the work was done for the defendant's benefit as an integral part of its enterprise, with the defendant creating the risk.

Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 13 pulled the reins back: a genuinely independent contractor running their own business is still outside vicarious liability. The doctor who conducted medical examinations for Barclays was not "akin to an employee" — he was a self-employed professional with his own practice.

Stage 2: The Close Connection Test

Once the relationship is established, you need a sufficient or "close connection" between the tortious act and the nature of the employment (Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2001] UKHL 22; Mohamud v WM Morrison Supermarkets plc [2016] UKSC 11). The court asks what field of activities was entrusted to the employee and whether there is a sufficient connection between that field and the wrongful conduct.

In Mohamud, a petrol-station attendant violently assaulted a customer. The Supreme Court held Morrisons vicariously liable — serving customers was the attendant's job, and the assault was an unbroken (if appalling) sequence from that field of activities.

WM Morrison Supermarkets plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 12 then sharpened the limits: a rogue employee who leaked payroll data to harm his employer was acting on his personal vendetta, not in connection with his employment. No vicarious liability.

Independent Contractors

An employer is generally not liable for the torts of an independent contractor. Narrow exceptions exist where the duty is non-delegable — for example, where a hospital admits a patient (Woodland v Swimming Teachers Association [2013] UKSC 66), or where extra-hazardous activities are involved.

SQE1 trap: candidates confuse vicarious liability with an employer's direct liability for negligent hiring or training. Those are separate claims in negligence against the employer itself.

Nuisance (Private and Public) and Rylands v Fletcher

Private Nuisance

Private nuisance protects a claimant's use and enjoyment of land from unreasonable interference by a neighbour. The claimant must have a proprietary interest (freehold, leasehold, or exclusive possession) — a mere occupant does not have standing (Hunter v Canary Wharf Ltd [1997] AC 655).

Three types of nuisance:

• Physical damage to land — reasonableness is not assessed in the same way; substantial damage is usually enough
• Amenity interference — noise, smell, dust. Reasonableness depends on locality, duration, time of day, and utility of the activity
• Encroachment — tree roots, overhanging branches

Factors the court weighs:

• Locality — what is reasonable in an industrial zone differs from a residential street (Sturges v Bridgman (1879) 11 Ch D 852)
• Duration and frequency
• Sensitivity — the claimant cannot claim for an unusually sensitive use
• Malice — deliberate harm is almost always unreasonable (Christie v Davey [1893] 1 Ch 316)
• Public benefit — relevant but not decisive

Foreseeability of the type of harm is required (Cambridge Water Co v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994] 2 AC 264).

"Coming to the nuisance" is not a defence. If a pre-existing activity becomes a nuisance only when a new neighbour moves in, the activity can still be restrained (Miller v Jackson [1977] QB 966, though complicated on its facts).

Public Nuisance

Public nuisance is an unreasonable interference with a right common to the public — for example, obstructing a highway. A private claimant can sue only if they have suffered "special damage" over and above that suffered by the public generally (Benjamin v Storr (1874) LR 9 CP 400).

Rylands v Fletcher

The rule in Rylands v Fletcher (1868) LR 3 HL 330 imposes strict liability where:

• The defendant brings and keeps on their land something likely to do mischief if it escapes
• That thing escapes to the claimant's land
• The use is non-natural
• The damage is of a reasonably foreseeable kind (Cambridge Water)

Modern treatment has narrowed the rule considerably. Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2003] UKHL 61 treated it as a sub-species of nuisance and confirmed that personal injury is not recoverable.

SQE1 trap: candidates treat nuisance and Rylands as interchangeable. They are not. Nuisance protects use and enjoyment; Rylands is about isolated escapes of dangerous things.

Defences

Defences are fertile ground for examiner traps because a plausible-looking option often relies on the wrong defence.

• Contributory negligence (Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945) — reduces damages by a just and equitable proportion. It is a partial defence and applies to all torts where the claimant's own negligence contributed to their loss.
• Volenti non fit injuria (consent to the risk) — a complete defence but narrowly applied. The claimant must have known of the risk, understood its nature, and voluntarily accepted it. Knowledge alone is not enough (Smith v Baker [1891] AC 325). Volenti does not apply where statute excludes it (e.g. motor insurance contexts) or where the claimant is acting under a compulsion that negates free choice.
• Ex turpi causa (illegality) — a complete defence where the claim arises directly from the claimant's own illegal act. The modern approach is the flexible, policy-based test from Patel v Mirza [2016] UKSC 42.
• Consent — relevant in trespass to the person and medical negligence. Consent must be informed and valid.
• Self-defence — reasonable force used in response to an actual or perceived threat, relevant primarily in trespass to the person.
• Necessity — a narrow defence, both in public necessity (protecting the wider community) and private necessity (protecting the defendant or another from greater harm).

SQE1 trap: questions sometimes describe a claimant who has broken a rule (run a red light, trespassed) and offer ex turpi causa as a distractor. Illegality is not triggered by minor regulatory breaches — it requires the claim itself to arise out of serious wrongdoing.

Remedies

Damages

Damages in tort aim to put the claimant, so far as money can, in the position they would have been in if the tort had not been committed (Livingstone v Rawyards Coal Co (1880) 5 App Cas 25).

Personal injury damages divide into:

• General damages — non-pecuniary losses, assessed by the court using the Judicial College Guidelines. Includes:
  • Pain, suffering, and loss of amenity (PSLA)
  • Loss of future earnings (the multiplier/multiplicand approach, often using the Ogden tables)
• Special damages — pecuniary losses that can be specifically quantified up to the date of trial. Includes:
  • Medical expenses, care costs, lost earnings to date, damaged property

Other categories you should know:

• Aggravated damages — increase the compensatory award where the defendant's conduct has injured the claimant's feelings
• Exemplary damages — punitive, available only in narrow categories (Rookes v Barnard [1964] AC 1129): oppressive government action, conduct calculated to make a profit, or express statutory authorisation
• Nominal damages — a small award to vindicate a right where no loss has been proven, available in torts actionable per se (e.g. trespass)

Injunctions

An injunction is a discretionary equitable remedy. In nuisance cases, an injunction may be granted to restrain the ongoing interference. Since Coventry v Lawrence [2014] UKSC 13, the court has more flexibility to award damages in lieu of an injunction where the "working rule" from Shelfer v City of London Electric Lighting Co [1895] 1 Ch 287 is not strictly required.

10 SQE1 Tort Exam Techniques

1. Read the scenario twice before looking at the options. Tort fact patterns are dense. Skimming loses you marks.
2. Identify the tort first. Is it negligence, occupiers' liability, nuisance, vicarious liability, or a combination? The framework you run depends on this choice.
3. Run the four-element framework out loud in your head. Duty → Breach → Causation → Damage. If the question is about causation, do not get distracted by a duty issue that is not really in play.
4. Apply the post-Robinson duty position. If the scenario fits an established category, do not waste time on Caparo. Save Caparo for novel cases.
5. Watch for subsidiary torts hidden inside the facts. A road accident on private land might involve negligence and occupiers' liability. A workplace injury might involve both vicarious liability and the employer's own direct duty.
6. Distinguish primary and secondary victims carefully. Most psychiatric injury questions turn on the Alcock control mechanisms.
7. Keep nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher separate in your head. Different tests, different remedies, different standing rules.
8. Consider defences as a matter of course. Contributory negligence is partial; volenti and ex turpi causa are complete. A correct answer might hinge on a partial reduction in damages, not total defeat.
9. Eliminate obviously wrong options first. In a five-option SBA, you can usually rule out two answers on the legal test alone. That doubles your odds on the remaining three.
10. Do not write an essay in your head. You do not get marks for reasoning. Your job is to pick the best answer, not justify it. Save the brain-cycles for the next question.

For a deeper look at MCQ strategy across all FLK1 and FLK2 subjects, read our SQE1 MCQ technique and exam strategy guide.

Common SQE1 Tort Mistakes

• Confusing duty and breach. Duty asks whether the defendant owed the claimant any care at all. Breach asks whether they fell below the required standard. The tests are different; the cases are different; mixing them up gets you a wrong answer.
• Forgetting the Robinson update. Running the full Caparo three-stage test on established duty categories invites you to pick an answer that relies on policy factors which are not actually in issue.
• Missing secondary victim requirements. Secondary victim questions almost always turn on one of the Alcock mechanisms — close ties of love and affection, proximity in time and space, means of perception, sudden shock. If one is missing, the claim fails.
• Treating nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher as the same tort. Nuisance is about ongoing unreasonable use; Rylands is about escape of a dangerous thing from non-natural use. They have different elements and different recoverable heads of loss.
• Applying the 1957 Act to trespassers. Lawful visitors fall under the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957; trespassers under the 1984 Act. Crossing the scope of permission turns a visitor into a trespasser for that activity.
• Overreaching on vicarious liability. Not every act by an employee is in the course of employment. If the employee is on a personal frolic or pursuing a personal vendetta (Morrisons [2020]), the close connection test fails.
• Ignoring remoteness. Factual causation is only half the battle. Damage of an unforeseeable kind is not recoverable, no matter how directly it flows from the breach.
• Forgetting the eggshell skull rule. If the type of harm is foreseeable, the full extent is recoverable even if the claimant's particular vulnerability made the damage unusually severe.
• Neglecting contributory negligence. Even where the defendant is plainly liable, the best answer may involve a reduction in damages. Always ask whether the claimant's own conduct contributed.
• Memorising case names without principles. Examiners do not reward case recognition — they reward the ability to apply the principle. If you can state what a case stands for in one line, that is enough.

Close and Next Steps

Tort on the SQE1 rewards structure over cleverness. Build the framework, memorise the cases that anchor each step, and practise relentlessly on timed questions until the four-element analysis becomes automatic. The candidates who fail tort are rarely those who do not know the law; they are those who misread the question, pick the wrong framework, or fail to spot a subsidiary tort hiding inside a negligence fact pattern.

To turn this guide into exam-ready recall:

• Dive into our full tort law study materials for deeper topic-by-topic coverage
• Test yourself with our free quick quiz to see where you stand
• Drill the key cases with our tort flashcards, built for spaced repetition
• Explore our pricing plans for full access to our practice bank and mock exams
• Pair this with our SQE1 contract law revision guide to shore up the other big FLK1 subject
• Sharpen your single-best-answer technique with our SQE1 MCQ technique and exam strategy guide

Tort is not where SQE1 candidates usually fail — but it is where careful candidates pick up the marks that separate a comfortable pass from a borderline one. Get the framework right, learn the cases that anchor it, and practise until the analysis is reflex. Good luck with your tort revision for SQE1 in 2026.