Torts carries 25 scored MBE questions and appears on the MEE, and the exam tests it in blocks: intentional torts, negligence, strict and products liability, and then the dignitary and economic torts such as defamation, privacy and nuisance. Negligence dominates, and most negligence questions are decided by one element, usually duty or causation, so learn to find the element the facts were built to test. Defenses and the allocation of fault between defendants are frequent second issues, and a question that looks like a pure negligence question often turns entirely on comparative fault or assumption of risk instead. The Torts outline covers the same subject as a single continuous reference with attack checklists and propositions, which suits the last weeks of review. Read the outline for a full pass through negligence, and drill individual rules unit by unit once the first pass is done.
Battery requires intentional infliction of harmful or offensive contact with the plaintiff’s person, including connected objects; transferred intent can apply.
Elements and checkpoints
Intent to cause contact or apprehension
Harmful or offensive contact
Causation
No privilege
Exam trap
The defendant need not intend injury if intending the contact that is objectively offensive.
Application example
Snatching a plate from someone’s hand can be contact with the person for battery.
Actual or apparent consent defeats an intentional tort within its scope, unless invalidated by incapacity, material mistake known to the defendant, fraud as to an essential matter, or duress.
Elements and checkpoints
Express or implied consent
Capacity
Scope
No invalidating condition
Exam trap
Consent to one kind or degree of contact is not consent to a materially different one.
Application example
Consent to an ordinary sports contact does not necessarily cover an intentional attack outside the game’s customs.
A person generally owes foreseeable plaintiffs reasonable care under the circumstances; specialized standards can apply to children, professionals, possessors of land, and statutory violations.
Elements and checkpoints
Duty
Applicable standard
Foreseeable plaintiff
No valid limitation
Exam trap
Foreseeability often shapes duty and proximate cause but does not replace breach analysis.
Application example
A driver owes pedestrians and other road users reasonable care.
The factfinder may infer breach when the event ordinarily does not happen absent negligence, the likely causes were within the defendant’s responsibility, and the plaintiff did not cause it.
Elements and checkpoints
Negligence-type event
Defendant responsibility or control
No plaintiff contribution
Inference rather than automatic liability
Exam trap
Res ipsa usually permits an inference; it does not compel a plaintiff’s verdict.
Application example
A surgical instrument left inside a patient strongly supports the inference.
Actual cause commonly asks whether harm would have occurred but for the breach; proximate cause limits liability to harms within the risks that made the conduct negligent.
Elements and checkpoints
But-for or multiple-cause test
Unbroken legal cause
Foreseeable type of harm
Intervening forces
Exam trap
An unforeseeable manner of a foreseeable type of harm often remains within scope.
Application example
Negligently blocking an exit can proximately cause crowd-crush injuries during a foreseeable emergency.
A tortfeasor takes the plaintiff as found and is liable for the full extent of unusually severe harm once the type of physical injury is within the scope of risk.
Elements and checkpoints
Actionable tort
Foreseeable type of harm
Unusual extent attributable to plaintiff condition
Exam trap
The rule expands extent, not the need to prove duty, breach, causation, and an actionable type of harm.
Application example
A minor impact causing catastrophic injury because of a rare condition does not cap recovery at ordinary injury.
A commercial seller is strictly liable for a manufacturing, design, or warning defect that exists when the product leaves control and actually and proximately causes harm during foreseeable use.
Elements and checkpoints
Commercial supplier
Defect type
Defect at distribution
Foreseeable use
Causation and damages
Exam trap
Privity is generally unnecessary, but strict liability does not make sellers insurers against every accident.
Application example
A bottle departing from intended design and exploding during ordinary use may have a manufacturing defect.
Defamation requires a defamatory statement of fact about the plaintiff, publication to a third person, fault, and damages or a qualifying category; constitutional rules add falsity and heightened fault in specified cases.
Elements and checkpoints
Defamatory factual assertion
Of and concerning plaintiff
Publication
Fault
Falsity and damages as required
Exam trap
Pure opinion may be protected, but an ‘opinion’ implying undisclosed defamatory facts can be actionable.
Application example
Calling someone a thief while implying private factual knowledge may be treated as a factual assertion.
The course separately measures retrieval, discrimination, fact application, writing, integrated judgment, and timed completion so memorization is never mistaken for readiness.
STAGE 1
Learn
Read the full outline, rule boundaries, and worked application.
25 of the 175 scored questions, since NCBE distributes the scored questions evenly across the seven subject areas.
What do I assume on MBE Torts questions?+
That survival actions and wrongful death claims are available, and that joint and several liability and pure comparative fault are the relevant rules unless indicated otherwise, per NCBE.
Which Torts category is tested most?+
Negligence. NCBE says approximately half the Torts questions are based on it, and the other half come from intentional torts, strict liability and other torts.
What are the four categories in NCBE's Torts outline?+
Intentional torts, negligence, strict liability and products liability, and other torts, numbered I through IV in NCBE's Torts outline.
Where does products liability appear in the Torts outline?+
In category III, strict liability and products liability, which covers claims against manufacturers and other defendants arising out of manufacture and distribution of products, with defenses.
What is the default comparative fault rule on the MBE?+
Pure comparative fault, together with joint and several liability, unless the question indicates otherwise, according to NCBE's outline note.
How many MBE questions are unscored?+
25 of the 200, and NCBE says they are indistinguishable from scored questions, so answer all of them.
How long is each MBE session?+
Three hours with 100 questions and no scheduled breaks, according to NCBE.