Lex Loci Delicti

Lex loci delicti — the law of the place of the wrongdoing — is the traditional English private international law rule for choosing which country's law governs a tort claim. It is codified in section 11 of the Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995, which provides that 'the general rule is that the applicable law is the law of the country in which the events constituting the tort or delict in question occur.' Where the events making up the tort occur in more than one country, section 11(2) supplies specific tie-breakers rather than leaving the court to weigh up the whole picture.

For personal injury or death, section 11(2)(a) points to 'the law of the country where the individual was when he sustained the injury.' For damage to property, section 11(2)(b) points to 'the law of the country where the property was when it was damaged.' For any other kind of case, section 11(2)(c) falls back on 'the law of the country in which the most significant element or elements of those events occurred' — a more open-textured test for torts, such as economic or reputational harm, that do not fit neatly into the personal injury or property-damage categories.

The 1995 Act's general rule can be displaced under section 12 where it is substantially more appropriate for the applicable law to be that of another country, taking into account factors connecting the tort to each country. In practice the 1995 Act's lex loci delicti rule has been overtaken for most tort claims by Article 4 of the Rome II Regulation (which uses the closely related lex loci damni test), but the 1995 Act continues to apply to claims falling outside Rome II's scope, including defamation claims, which Rome II expressly excludes.