TORTS STEIN FALL 2015
CHAPTER 1: INTENTIONAL TORTS—THE PRIMA FACIE CASE
BATTERY
ELEMENTS: (Rst. §13)
Intentional
act
causing harmful or offensive contact
Intent and Volition
Intent to harm does not matter for battery, but you need to have the intent to do an unlawful/wrongful contact
Must act for the purpose of inflicting a harmful or offensive contact on the P, or realize that such a contact is substantially certain to result. (Rst. §8A)
intentionally need to do the wrongful act but don’t need intent to cause the consequences
Volsburg v. Puttney (school-room kick)
P: Young boy in a school-room who was kicked by D resulting in a lame leg.
Issue: whether or not the D can be held liable by the kick
PRINCIPLE—you don’t need intent to do harm, you need the intent for the wrongful act
you need only show that the intention was unlawful OR that the D is in fault
Unlawful/wrongful
Considered within the circumstances
the parties where in the classroom after the teacher called the class into order, therefore the kicking would be unlawful
Going outside of the social norm of the situation would be wrong or unlawful contact.
Violating someone’s personal dignity
would a reasonable person know that this offense was likely
Knight v. Jewett (tag-football = amputated finger)
Found that there was no intent to harm
There was no evidence that D intended to injure or to commit a battery—just playing football but this was easy to find because the P conceded that she did not believe that D intended to injure her
White v. University of Idaho (Piano teacher drumming on student’s back)
Found liable because:
She didn’t want the act done to her
She found the act offensive
He intended to touch her
unlawful b/c the touching violated her personal dignity she found it offensive it was outside the social norm
Polmater v. Russ (Insanity Defense)
Insanity cannot be a defense to the intent of battery because for social policy reasons it would lead people to not take care of their loved ones that suffer from mental diseases. If it was okay for people to use insanity as a defense for battery there would be no incentive for family members to take care of their loved ones.
Laidlaw v. Sage (boss uses clerk as bomb shield)
D had the intent to act BUT it was involuntary because it was for self preservation
there were no other logical alternatives that could have been thought of in that short time
Ct. said that self protection is the first law of nature and makes this justified
the immanency of the danger must be considered when considering self-preservation
Transferred Intent
Rst. §16(2)—where the actor tries to batter one person and actually causes a harmful or offensive contact to another, she will be liable to the actual victim.
Rst. §13—an actor is subject to liability to another for battery if intending to cause a third person to have an imminent apprehension of a harmful bodily contact, the actor causes the other to suffer a harmful contact
If A attempts to commit a battery against B but mistakenly hits C instead, C can sue A for battery.
Keel v. Hainline (eraser fight)
The unlawful act was enough to show intent
The fact that there were 40 kids in the class room and they decided to throw erasers back in forth is enough to prove that they could have realized what the consequences would have been
The D was not the one that threw the eraser but it is just as likely that one of the other person’s involved could have hit the P so the liability extends to all those involved.
“if you should find that one r more of the remaining D’s did by their acts, signs, gestures, words or demeanor, wither aid, abet, encourage, procure, promote or instigate the assault and battery, then your verdict should be against all the Ds who participated in the assault and battery”
Manning v. Grimsley (pitcher throws ball at crowd)
Liable for battery because:
D intended to throw the ball in the direction of the hecklers
AND intended to cause them imminent apprehension of being hit
Harmful or Offensive Contact
RESTATEMENTS:
§18: Meaning of contact with another person
It is not necessary that he should bring any part of his own body in contact with another’s person
It is enough that he intentionally case his clothing or anything held or attached to him to come into such contact.
All that is necessary is that the actor intend to cause the other, directly or indirectly, to come in contact with a foreign substance in a manner which the other will reasonably regard as offensive
§18(d): Knowledge of Contact
it is not necessary that the other should know of the offensive contact which is inflicted upon him at the time when it is inflicted
§18(g): Necessity of intention
The actor is not liable for an act, which involves a risk, no matter how great, and unreasonable, that it will cause only an offensive contact, although his conduct id it involved a similar risk of invading a materially valuable interest would be actionable negligence or even recklessness.
Offensive: it “offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity–Rst. §19
Under this test, a contact is offensive if a reasonable person in the circumstances of the victim would find the particular contact offense
An actor is not liable for a contact that is considered socially acceptable
a contact that the reasonable person would find offensive, it is not a defense that she didn’t mean to give offense, or that she did not realize that the victim would be offended.
Leichtman v. WLW Jacor Communications Inc. (smoke in the face at radio show)
Blowing smoke into an anti-smoking advocate was an offensive contact
Offensive contact can be something that was done “for the purpose of causing physical discomfort, humiliation and distress”
If it offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity then it can be a an offensive act
ective to bar recovery in a tort action although the conduct consented to is a crime
(2) If conduct is made criminal in order to protect a certain class of persons irrespective of their consent, the consent of members of that class to the conduct is not effective to bar a tort action
Hollerud v. Malamis (P got started a play-fight with a bartender, broke fingers)
If the P owing to his state of intoxication was incapable of expressing a rational will and the D had knowledge of this state, the consent was ineffective.
TRESSPASS
ELEMENTS
Intent and
enters land in possession of another or causes at thing/person to do so, or
remains on land, or
fails to remove from the land a thing which he is under a duty to remove
Desnick ( ABC show hidden cameras in dentist office to show Dr. in bad light)
Dr. argued that he would not have consented to their presence if he knew they were there trespass
Utilizes the three main elements but does not find ABC guilty of trespass
rationale:
the activities of the office were not disrupted
there was no invasion of a person’s private space
no embarrassingly intimate details of anybody’s life were publicized
no eavesdropping on a private conversation
no violation of the doctor-patient privilege
consent to entry: consent to an entry is often given legal effect even though the entrant has intentions that if known to the owner of the property would cause him for understandable and lawful reasons to revoke his const.
rule: the entry needs to be invasive in the sense of infringing the kind of interest of the πs that the law of trespass protects: it was not an interference with the ownership or possession of land.
Peggy v. Gray ( π’s hounds would enter onto ∆’s land and cause cattle stampede)
rule: you can still satisfy intent to trespass with constructive knowledgeà you should have known this would happen
the doges were hound dogs used to hunt fox you should have known the dogs would do this if you let them loose to chase foxes that would realistically run into neighbor’s yard
Malouf v. Dallas Athletic Country Club (golf course balls hit the π’s cars)
π’s sued country club for trespass b/c gold balls kept damaging their cars.
ct. found no intent to hit the cars so there was no liability
different from Peggy b/c π’s probably could have argued that the ∆’s should have known the balls would hit the cars
