Immigration Law Outline

Battery
This tort protects the interest in personal security.

Intentionally causing harmful or offensive contact with the plaintiff.

1. Intent: desire or knowledge with a substantial degree of certainty that there will be harmful or offensive contact as a result of P’s volitional act
a. Volitional (matters) ≠ Intent ≠ Motive (doesn’t matter)
i. Volition: desire to perform a particular task; voluntariness
ii. Intent: there can be no intent without volition. Intent is a desire or knowledge to a substantial degree of certainty that a particular contact will result from the D’s volitional act. Act must be done for the purpose of causing the contact or with knowledge that such contact is substantially certain to be produced. Actor must realize to a substantial certainty that the contact will result.
iii. Motive: is the reasoning to bring a consequence about. Motive comes up to affect damages but it is not relevant in determining intent
b. Transferred intent (tort-to-tort, person-to-person):
i. Intending assault (apprehension) but causing battery (contact): still liable for battery as if D had intended the contact
ii. Intending false imprisonment (confinement) but causing battery (contact): still liable for battery as if D had intended the contact
iii. Intending apprehension, contact, or confinement to one person but unintentionally causing contact, apprehension, or confinement to another: person who actually suffers the invasion can recover for battery, assault or false imprisonment
c. You can intend something as a goal (take fluoride pill), a means (take water with fluoride), or as a concomitant (intentional if you know there’s fluoride in the water and you drink the water anyway).
d. Issues:
i. Foreseeable risk (mere knowledge and appreciation of a risk) v. substantial certainty
ii. Known consequences (w/subst.certainty) v. unknown consequences (negligence?)
iii. D’s statement (“ I didn’t mean harm”) v. line of reasoning (1. given the circumstances disclosed in the evidence, reasonable person would have known that the consequence in question was substantially certain to follow the act, 2. the evidence shows that D was even brighter and shrewder than most others, and 3. we can infer that the actor knew even though testifying otherwise). Court can instruct jury that it is OK to infer from circumstantial evidence that the actor’s state of mind was the same as a reasonable person’s state of mind would have been.
e. Cases:
i. Ghassemieh v. Schafer (Maryland): 8th grade student pulled teacher’s chair. Testified that pulled chair as a joke but knew teacher was going to fall and intended embarrassment (offensive contact). Court ruled for P, reasoning that D doesn’t have to mean harm. Knowledge with a substantial degree of certainty of offensive contact (embarrassment) is enough, so jokes, horseplay, pranks can be a battery.
1. Court also recognized that battery and negligence claims can originate from the same act:
a. Battery: intentionally causing embarrassment (offensive)
b. Negligence: unintentionally causing injury. Here D had a duty to refrain from conduct exposing the P to unreasonable risk of injury and breached that duty, resulting in P’s injury.
ii. Garratt v. Dailey (Washington): 5-year old defendant pulled chair as P was about to sit down, resulting in injury. P claimed he did not intend harm. Act of moving the chair was considered volitional but court also considered whether D knew with substantial certainty that the P would attempt to sit down where the chair had been. D’s age is only relevant in determining what he knew based on his experience, capacity, and understanding (subjective standard) but is irrelevant to battery claim (no special exceptions for children v. adults). Remanded for clarification with instructions to make definite findings on the issue of whether D knew with substantial certainty that the P would attempt to sit down where the chair which he had moved had been and to change the judgment if the findings were that he knew. On remand, it was found that D knew with substantial certainty that P would attempt to sit in the place where the chair had been. Judgment for P, affirmed by State Sup.Court.
1. Criticism: Court here is assuming that knowing that P will sit where chair had been is the same as knowing that P was certain to suffer a harmful or offensive bodily contact with the ground. Might the boy not believe that P would not be hurt and that she would think it was all in good fun? Court in Garratt says you only need to intend the contact, however the definition of the tort requires intending a harmful contact or offensive contact, not any contact that just turns out to be harmful/offensive later. This seems to be common source of confusion in courts, failing to focus on what consequence must be intended to meet the requirements of battery.
2. Other courts do not impose liability on the facts of Garratt, rejecting theory that infants should be liable for their intentional torts irrespective of intent to cause harm. Ohio (DeLuca v. Bowden) holds that child under age of 7 cannot be held liable for an intentional tort because she is incapable of legal and moral choices. Colorado (Horton v. Reaves) rejected Garratt, adopting theory that the infant need not int