Tort Law Please help me understand!?

Hi i have a tort law exam coming up soon, i have attended every class and i still dont understand any of it.
Please can you give me information on the following:

Consent
Contributory negligence
Volenti non fit injuria
Vicarious Liability
Occupational Liability


Please do not leave comments if you do not know, i am asking because i do not understand these subjects, not because i have not read them...

i have passed everything so far except this subject completely stumped me, so i do not wish to try a different field. thanks to Lisa and Sarge for your well informed answers, good luck in your exams Lisa :)

CONSENT -- Agreement, approval, or permission as to some act or purpose, when given voluntarily by a competent person (as in giving consent for the police to search your vehicle during a traffic stop). It applies to tort law in that an act of consent, such as allowing someone to borrow your automobile, may be a bar to recovery if the person who borrowed your automobile gets in an accident. It also applies in cases where a person voluntarily gives consent for another person to do something that may cause harm.

CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE -- When a complainant committed an act or omission that in some way is also a partial cause of the injury or damage. The contributory negligence doctrine states that such complainants are barred from recovery if the damage suffered is partly the complainant's own fault. Most states operate under the comparative negligence doctrine, which states a complainant's potential award will be reduced in proportion to his own culpability (e.g., the complainant was 30% at fault, therefore his recovery is limited to 70% of the damages).

VOLENTI NON FIT INJURIA -- Latin for "a person is not wronged by that to which he or she consents." It's a principle that a person who knowingly and voluntarily risks danger cannot recover for any resulting injury or damage. Also known as "assumption of risk."

VICARIOUS LIABILITY -- Liability that a supervisory party (such as an employer) bears for the actionable conduct of a subordinate or associate (such as an employee) because of the relationship between the two parties. For example, if an employee of ABC Company took the company van out for a spin and got in an accident, the company could be vicariously liable for injury and damages that resulted from the accident.

OCCUPATIONAL LIABILITY -- Liability that a person bears for their actionable conduct in conjunction with their job or profession. This type of liability cuts both ways. If a person suffers injury or damage from a known occupational hazard, especially when the person does not take proper safety measures, he/she may be barred from recovery. On the flipside, if a person causes injury or damage to another as the result of doing their job, especially if negligence or wrongful act or omission is involved, that person may be liable -- the important thing here is the person who suffered injury or damage could bring legal action against that person AND may also be able to bring legal action against the person's employer.

It's too late. If you don't understand it by now, you're probably out of luck. Try Black's for quick discussion better than this forum.

Maybe you better start considering a different field..

People are mean. I'm a law student too so I will share what I know.
Consent is an affirmative defense to intentional tort acts like if someone says "can I hit you?" and the other guy says "yes" and then the guy who got hit sues the guy who hit him for battery the the guy that hit him could present an affirmative defense of "consent."
CN - is when somebody is partly responsible for their injury. Like if you don't buckle up and get in a car accident and the accident was the other guys fault, but becuase you didn't buckle up, that would be contributory negligence for your injury.

My hand is tired and the others are wordy but good luck. I have exams coming up too.

Sarge gave some good definitions but Wikipedia is a good site to look up some of these terms and a lot of times they are written more for layman. I resort to it once in a while when my case books are speaking in Greek. Lol.

The consent example sarge gave would only be an affirmative defense for trespass to chatel but not for conversion if they destroyed the car because you would only be consenting to them borrowing it not desroying it.

I just want to make sure you knew that so you don't get marked down if you get a question on that.