Remedies to Law of Torts: Judicial and Extrajudicial Remedies | Legal Reasoning for CLAT PDF Download

Remedies for Torts

• Judicial Remedies: These are the remedies for torts that the courts of law provisions to an aggrieved party.
• Extrajudicial Remedies: If the injured party takes the law into their own hand (albeit lawfully), the remedies for torts are called extra-judicial remedies.

Judicial Remedies for Torts

As the term suggests, these are the remedies for torts that the courts of law provide to an aggrieved party. Judicial remedies are of three main types:

Damages

• Damages, or legal damages are the amount of money paid to the aggrieved party to bring them back to the position in which they were before the tort had occurred. They are paid to a plaintiff to help them recover the loss they have suffered.
• Damages are the primary remedy in a cause of action for torts. The word “damages” should not be confused with the plural of the word “damage”, which generally means ‘harm’ or ‘injury’.
• The fundamental principle applied to the assessment of an award of damages is that the claimant should be fully compensated for his loss.
• He is entitled to be restored to the position that he would have been in, had the tort not been committed, insofar as this can be done by the payment of money.

Types of damages

• Exemplary or Vindictive damages – are damages on an increased scale, awarded to the plaintiff over and above what will barely compensate him for his property loss, where the wrong done to him was aggravated by circumstances of violence, oppression, malice etc.
• Ordinary or Real damages – are compensation for general damage. General damages are those which the law implies in every breach of contract and in every violation of a legal right.
• Nominal damages – They are awarded for the vindication of a right where no real loss or injury can be proved.
• Contemptuous damages – Where a court recognises that the claimant’s legal rights have been infringed technically, but disapproves of their conduct and considers that the action should not have been brought, it may order contemptuous damages. These will amount to no more than the value of the least valuable coin of the realm.

Injunction

• A judicial process operating in personam, and requiring a person to whom it is directed to do or refrain from doing a particular thing

Types of injunction

• Mandatory – When, to prevent the breach of an obligation, it is necessary to compel the performance of certain acts, the Court may in its discretion grant an injunction to prevent the breach (s. 55 of the Specific Relief Act, 1877).
• Permanent or perpetual – By perpetual injunction a defendant is perpetually enjoined from the assertion of a right, or from the commission of an act, which would be contrary to the rights of the plaintiff (s. 53, the Specific Relief Act, 1877).
• Temporary – Temporary injunction is such as is to continue until a specified time, or until the further order of the Court. It is regulated by the CPC (s. 53, The Specific Relief Act, 1877; CPC Order XXXIX Rule 1.
• Ad-interim – An officer is sometimes appointed ad interim, when the principal officer is absent, or for some cause incapable of acting for the time.

Restitution of property

• The third judicial remedy available in the Law of Torts is that of Specific Restitution of Property. Restitution means restoration of goods back to the owner of the goods. When a person is wrongfully dispossessed of his property or goods, he is entitled to the restoration of his property.

Extra-judicial remedies

• When a person can lawfully avoid or remedy himself without the intervention of courts, these remedies for torts are called extra-judicial remedies for torts. In this, the parties take the law into their own hands. 
• Extra Judicial Remedies for torts refers to those remedies where an aggrieved person can take such actions that can undo the damage that has happened to him, without the court’s intervention.

There are 5 types of extra judicial remedies for torts that are available to people who have suffered from some civil wrong. These include Expulsion of Trespasser, Right of Re-entry on Land, Right of Re-caption of Goods, Abatement of Nuisance and Distress Damage Feasant.

• Self defence – The use of force to protect oneself, one’s family, or one’s property from a real or threatened attack.
• Expulsion of trespassers – Forcibly evicting the trespasser.
• Reception of chattels – Chattel means movable or transferable property; personal property.
• Re-entry of land
• Abatement of a nuisance – Abatement is the act of eliminating or nullifying; the act of lessening or moderating.
• Distress damage feasant – the right to seize animals or inanimate chattels that are damaging or encumbering land and to keep them as security until the owner pays compensation.