Duty in PA and NJ Tort Law

Duty in PA and NJ Tort Law

Duty is the threshold question in Pennsylvania and New Jersey negligence law: before breach, causation, or damages are ever reached, a court has to find that the defendant owed the plaintiff an obligation of care in the first place. That obligation rarely comes from a single, simple rule. It can be created by statute, by voluntarily assuming responsibility for a task, by controlling a piece of land, by a special relationship between the parties, or by a company’s own decision to hire, supervise, or entrust someone with a dangerous instrumentality.

This pillar collects the firm’s full analysis of how duty is established and defended across both states, organized by the specific legal mechanism that creates it.

Assumption of Duty

How a party who voluntarily undertakes a task — even without a pre-existing legal obligation — can become bound to perform it with reasonable care. Read more.

Statutory Imposed Duty

When a legislature, rather than the common law, defines the standard of care a defendant owed. Read more.

Duty to People on Land

The premises liability framework governing what property owners and occupiers owe to visitors, tenants, and others on their land. Read more.

Special Relationships and the Affirmative Duty to Protect

Certain relationships — landlord-tenant, employer-employee, school-student — can create an affirmative duty to protect that would not otherwise exist. Read more.

Negligent Entrustment

Liability for handing over a dangerous instrumentality, such as a vehicle, to someone known to be unfit to use it safely. Read more.

Negligent Supervision, Hiring and Retention

When an employer’s own hiring, supervision, or retention decisions — not just an employee’s conduct — become the basis for liability. Read more.

Duty of a Product Manufacturer

The distinct duty owed by manufacturers to design, warn about, and safely bring products to market. Read more.

Categories of Product Liability Cases

How design defect, manufacturing defect, and failure-to-warn theories differ, and which applies to a given product failure. Read more.

Medical Malpractice in PA and NJ

The professional duty of care owed by physicians and other providers, and how it differs procedurally from ordinary negligence claims. Read more.

Duty Arising from Assertion of Control

When a party who takes practical control over a space, task, or process assumes a duty of care over it, even absent ownership. Read more.

Creation of the Hazard, Failure to Remedy

Liability that follows from creating a dangerous condition, and separately, from knowing about one and failing to correct it. Read more.

Foreseeability and the Reasonable Person Standard

How courts test whether a risk was foreseeable enough to fall within the scope of a defendant’s duty. Read more.

The Landlord and the Property Management Company

How duty is allocated — and sometimes shared — between an owner and a third-party property manager. Read more.

The Workers’ Compensation Trap

Why an on-the-job injury does not always end at the workers’ compensation system, and when a third-party negligence claim survives alongside it. Read more.