Picture this. You are 140 questions into the FLK1 paper, the clock is eating into your final hour, and a long fact pattern appears: a cyclist clipped by a delivery van, a hospital that may have delayed treatment, and five answer options that all look plausible. Which one wins? In Tort Law, the difference between the right answer and a clever distractor is almost always one missing element of the negligence chain. Get the structure into muscle memory and these questions become quick points. Skip it, and you bleed time you do not have.
Tort is one of the seven FLK1 subjects, and the SRA loves it for the SQE1 Single Best Answer format because liability turns on tightly defined elements. Let me walk you through what actually gets tested, and — more usefully — what to do with it on exam day.
The duty of care: where every Tort Law question begins
Negligence has four components: duty, breach, causation and damage. Miss any one and the claim fails. SQE1 examiners build whole questions around a single broken link, so train yourself to test all four in order.
Duty traces back to Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 and Lord Atkin's neighbour principle — you owe a duty to those so closely affected that you ought reasonably to have them in mind. For novel situations the courts historically used the three-stage Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] test: reasonable foreseeability of harm, proximity, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty.
Here is the trap candidates fall into. After Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4, the courts do not reach for Caparo in every case. Where an established category already exists — road users, doctor and patient, employer and employee — you simply apply that settled duty. Caparo is reserved for genuinely new situations. If an SBA option says "the court must apply the three-stage test", check whether the relationship is already recognised. Often it is, and that option is your distractor.
Exam tactic: read the parties first. Driver and pedestrian? Established duty — move straight to breach. A novel relationship or pure economic loss? Now Caparo and proximity matter.
Breach and the standard of care
Breach asks whether the defendant fell below the standard of the reasonable person doing that activity. The standard is objective. A learner driver is judged against the competent qualified driver, not against a nervous beginner — that is the point of Nettleship v Weston [1971] 2 QB 691. Personal inexperience is no excuse.
For professionals, apply the Bolam test (Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957]): a defendant is not negligent if acting in accordance with a responsible body of professional opinion. But that opinion must withstand logical scrutiny — the qualification from Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1997]. For medical advice and consent, remember the patient-centred approach in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015], which asks what risks a reasonable patient would want disclosed.
When weighing whether conduct fell short, the courts balance the likelihood of harm, the seriousness of potential injury, the cost of precautions and the social utility of the activity. Section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006 reinforces that a court may consider whether requiring precautions would deter a desirable activity. Expect a question where an option overstates the duty — for example, demanding precautions that are wildly disproportionate to a tiny risk.
Causation and remoteness: the part candidates rush
This is where SQE1 separates careful candidates from fast ones. Start with factual causation and the "but for" test. Would the harm have happened but for the defendant's breach? In Barnett v Chelsea and Kensington Hospital Management Committee [1969] a doctor negligently failed to examine a patient, but the patient would have died of arsenic poisoning regardless. No factual causation, so no liability — even though the breach was obvious.
That case is gold for the exam, because it shows breach without causation. Whenever an option lets you stop at "the defendant was clearly careless", ask the next question: did the carelessness actually cause this loss?
Then comes legal causation and remoteness. Damage must be of a reasonably foreseeable type — the rule in The Wagon Mound (No 1) [1961]. The precise way the harm occurs, and its extent, need not be foreseeable, only the kind of harm: see Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963]. And do not forget the "eggshell skull" rule — you take your victim as you find them, so an unusually vulnerable claimant who suffers greater harm can still recover in full.
Watch for intervening acts (novus actus interveniens) that may break the chain — a third party's deliberate act or the claimant's own unreasonable conduct. If the chain breaks, later loss is not recoverable.
Defences that quietly change the right answer
Defences are a favourite hiding place for the single best answer. Two come up constantly.
Contributory negligence under the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 is a partial defence. Damages are reduced to the extent that is just and equitable — it never wipes out the claim entirely. So an option saying "the claim fails completely because the claimant was partly at fault" is almost always wrong. Classic example: failing to wear a seatbelt reduces damages, it does not bar them.
Volenti non fit injuria (voluntary assumption of risk) is a complete defence, but it is narrow. The claimant must have full knowledge of the risk and freely consent to it. It rarely applies to employees pressured at work or to rescuers. Don't confuse a willingness to take part in an activity with consent to another's negligence.
Illegality (ex turpi causa) can also defeat a claim where the loss flows from the claimant's own criminal act, but apply it cautiously. If two defences are offered as answer options, pick the one whose conditions are genuinely satisfied on the facts — not the one that merely sounds severe.
The named torts FLK1 loves to test
Beyond general negligence, a handful of specific torts appear regularly, and each has its own framework. Learn them as separate checklists rather than blending them into one fuzzy idea.
Occupiers' liability. Two statutes, two visitors. The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 governs the duty owed to lawful visitors — a common duty to take reasonable care to keep them reasonably safe for the purpose of their visit. The Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 covers trespassers, with a narrower duty triggered only when the occupier knows of the danger and the trespasser, and the risk is one against which protection may reasonably be expected. Identify the visitor's status first; it dictates which Act applies.
Vicarious liability. An employer can be liable for an employee's tort committed in the course of employment, applying the "close connection" test. Recent decisions such as WM Morrison Supermarkets plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 12 narrowed it — a personal vendetta carried out by an employee may not be sufficiently connected to the job. Distinguish employees from independent contractors before you reach for vicarious liability at all.
Private nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher. Nuisance protects against unlawful interference with the use or enjoyment of land; the rule in Rylands v Fletcher (1868) covers escapes of dangerous things from non-natural land use. And for pure economic loss, recall that negligent misstatement may be actionable under Hedley Byrne & Co Ltd v Heller & Partners Ltd [1964] where there is an assumption of responsibility and reasonable reliance.
How to revise Tort Law for FLK1 efficiently
Knowing the law is half the job; applying it under timed conditions is the other half. A few habits that genuinely move the needle:
Build a one-page flowchart for negligence and tape it above your desk: duty → breach → factual causation → remoteness → defences → remedies. Run every practice question through it until the sequence is automatic. When a question feels impossible, it usually means one link is broken — find it and the answer reveals itself.
Keep a tight case list. You do not need fifty authorities; you need the right dozen anchored to the element they prove — Barnett for factual causation, Wagon Mound for remoteness, Bolam and Bolitho for professional standards, Robinson for established duties. Recite the proposition, not the full citation.
Then drill SBA questions in blocks of ten, timed at roughly 1 minute 40 seconds each, to match the real paper of 180 questions across 5 hours 20 minutes. Review every wrong answer and write one sentence explaining why the distractor was wrong. Was it a duty that did not exist, a partial defence treated as complete, or breach mistaken for causation? Patterns emerge fast.
Quick self-check: can you explain, in two lines, why a careless defendant who caused no factual loss is not liable? If yes, you have understood the heart of Tort Law.
Tort rewards structure over memorisation. Master the chain, learn the named torts as separate checklists, and respect the difference between partial and complete defences — and FLK1 Tort becomes a reliable source of marks rather than a time sink.
How CELE SQE can help
If you would like structured support, the CELE SQE programme (celebar.com) covers all 13 SQE1 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2, with our SQE1 courses ranging from the Short-term Course at £1,750 to the Long-term Course at £3,720, and a single-FLK option at half price if you only need FLK1. Many candidates pair this with the question bank at £575/month to drill the very SBA patterns described above, and the SQE2 Course (£1,450, with 61 full mocks in the official SRA format) is there when you progress. Reach us any time on WeChat SQE100 or at [email protected] — no pressure, just help when you want it.