Torts Zablotsky Spring 2015
I. Battery:
RULE: In order to establish a battery the actor must possess intent to cause harmful or offensive contact and harmful or offensive contact must directly or indirectly result from the act.
(a) Rule of Intent: A person acts with intent when a specific desire exists to produce a consequence, where the person acts with the purpose of producing that consequence or the person acts knowing that the consequence is substantially certain to result. Intent must be with purpose or knowledge to make harmful or offensive contact. Harmful meaning physical harm. Offensive means to offend a reasonable sense of personal dignity.
(b)Rule of Act: An act which directly or indirectly is the legal cause of a harmful contact with another’s person makes the actor liability to the other if the act is done with intention of bringing about a harmful or offensive contact. Harmful contact is contact that causes/results in physical harm. Physical harm means bodily harm, including physical injury, or harm to real or personal property. Bodily harm includes physical injury, illness, disease, impairment of bodily function, and death. Offensive conduct occurs when the contact ‘offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity. Harmful or offensive contact must directly or indirectly result from the person’s act.
(c) Transferred Intent: Transferred intent occurs when a person intends to cause harmful or offensive contact to one person but inadvertently causes the harmful or offensive contact to a third person causing the third person bodily harm that perhaps was intended to be caused to the initial victim but does not necessary result in the same harm caused to the third person that was intended for the initial person. It is not necessary that the actor know or have reason even to suspect that the other is in the vicinity of the third person whom the actor intended to affect and therefore, that he should recognize that his act, though directed against the third person, involves a risk of causing bodily harm to the other so that the act would be negligent toward him.
II. Assault:
RULE: In order to establish an assault, the actor must possess purpose and/or knowledge to place another in reasonable apprehension of harmful or offensive contact and must cause such apprehension. Apprehension must be imminent, aware and has the apparent ability to cause harmful or offensive contact to the individual. Reasonable apprehension is a fear or harm caused by threat – Imminent meaning no significant delay , Awareness meaning that this will happen and apparent ability to follow through with threat. Apprehension is established if a reasonable person is substantially certain that certain consequences will result from the actor’s actions. Causing apprehension is not transferrable.
Rule of Intent: Assault requires intent that there has been a purpose and/or knowledge of an unjustified interference with the personal right or liberty of another in a way that places the person in apprehension of harmful or offensive contact. Apprehension requires imminence, awareness and apparent ability to cause harmful or offensive contact. Intent can be established whether or not the actor actually intends those consequences to result.
Rule of Act: An actor causes apprehension of imminent harmful contact when there is no significant delay in the potential contact. Words alone do not make the actor liable for assault unless together without acts or circumstances they put the other in reasonable apprehension of imminent contact.
III. False imprisonment :
RULE: False imprisonment occurs when a person intentionally confines another without lawful privilege and against his consent, within a fixed boundary for any appreciable time, with no reasonable means of escaping, the other is aware/conscious of the confinement or is harmed by it, and his/her act directly or indirectly results in such a confinement of the other.
False Imprisonment
(Shoplifting is the most common)
Intent
Action
Purpose and knowledge to confine
Confinement
Elements:
1) Fixed boundary- Force or threat of force (ex
“to trespass’ it is enough that defendant intended to enter the land.
Intentional interference with right of owner’s exclusive possession. Required: Intentional entry into land – a volitional act. All you need to intend is to stand there. Easy to establish. Entering onto the land of another in a volitional way
2) Trespass and nuisance: RULE:
1) Trespass: An invasion of the plaintiff’s interest in the exclusive possession of his land.
2) Nuisance: Interference with one’s use and enjoyment to the land. Create an unpleasant situation
Remedies for trespass damages: When the defendant’s trespass physically damages the land, the plaintiff can get damages measured either by the cost of repair or by the diminution in the value of the premises resulting from the tort. Equitable injunctive relief: Stop trespassing
3) Conversion to chattel: RULE: An intentional exercise of dominion or control over a chattel which so seriously interferes with the right of another to control it that the actor may justly be required to pay the other the full value of the chattel. There is no requirement that the actor be conscious of his wrongdoing.
An actor Interfering with owners right of possession of personal property. All you have to do is be in possession of item. If you mistakenly believe it is yours does not matter it is still conversion.
4) Trespass to chattels: RULE: A trespass to a chattel may be committed by intentionally (a) dispossessing another of the chattel, OR (b) using or intermeddling with a chattel in the possession of another. Interference to someone’s personal property without taking possession. Ex: Kick someone’s dog. Intermeddle with chattel.
