In many instances, actors will not participate in a tortious activity unless others agree (or otherwise pre-commit) to join the activity or sponsor its operation. Contract law refuses to respect such agreements. It treats “a promise to commit a tort or to induce the commission of a tort” as “unenforceable.” This Article reveals that, in some cases, tort law gives what contract law takes away: it encourages the formation of and effectively enforces contracts to commit torts. Tort law allows a party who acted on the agreement and harmed another to recover from the non-injuring party who breached her promise and behaved carefully or refused to pay her share. In other words, tort law requires careful actors to pay expectation damages to the injurer. The result is ironic: tort law enforces agreements to engage in tortious activities—agreements that contract law would not enforce due to their tortious nature. In doing so, tort law protects the interests of the injurer who kept her promise, which contrasts with what many believe to be its conventional role: protecting the victim.
