What Are the Different Types of Civil Law Cases?

There are two main kinds of laws that are associated with wrongs committed by individuals in our society, one criminal and one civil. Civil law deals with wrongs committed against individuals by another individual or company, while criminal law deals with conduct that endangers the social welfare. Criminal law is what lands people in jail or on probation as it is carried out by the government. Civil law is what determines monetary settlements given for infractions of civil matters.

Here are the three main types of civil law situations:

Breach of Legal Duty Owed: this is when you have an inherent legal duty to do something to protect yourself and others in society and you fail to do so. So, let's say that you are in a car accident where you changed lanes without looking and hit another party's vehicle. You had a legal duty to make sure it was safe to change lanes and did not do so, therefore you broke the social contract of legal duty owed. Your punishment is generally to pay for the other party's damages through your liability insurance coverage.

Breach of Contract: this is the type of situation that you see all of the time on "People's Court" and "Judge Judy" as one individual has failed to follow through on an agreement. This contract could be written or verbal, but either way there was an agreement reached that was breached. For instance, when you agree to pay X amount of money for rent every month and you fail to pay you are in breach of contract.

Failure to Adhere to Regulations, Statutes, Ordinances, etc.: this is what happens when you have failed to provide a safe environment based on public guidelines or statutes. For instance, you open a restaurant and you do not make enough entrances or exits for a fire. You are in violating the public ordinances that are set in place to keep the community safe. This could result in fines from the local government that set the regulation and could threaten to close your business until requirements are met.

Civil law is what keeps society going in an orderly and comfortable way as it allows us to communicate with each other within specified bounds. The function of day-to-day economic society is to make deals with each other according to certain agreements or requirements, failure to have these guidelines would cause chaos.