Law Outlines Torts (Duke Beskind) Outlines
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1.1 Goals of the tort system 3
1.2 Categories of tort damages 3
2.2 Specific Prima Facie Cases 4
2.2.2 Intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) 8
2.2.6 Conversion (with Trespass to Chattels) 13
2.3.2 Self-defense/ defense of others/ defense of property 15
3.2 Duty (Question of law for the judge) 18
3.2.1 Risk creation + foreseeability (Misfeasance) 18
3.2.2 Affirmative duty to warn and rescue (Nonfeasance) 18
3.2.3 Arguments for/ against new rule 20
3.3 Reasonable person and standard of care 23
3.3.2 Internal Circumstances: Children/ mentally disordered/ disabled 24
3.3.3 External Circumstances 24
3.3.4 Violation of statute as negligence 25
3.4.1 Actual cause/ but for cause/ substantial cause 28
3.4.2 Proximate cause/ legal cause/ scope of liability 29
3.6.2 Contributory negligence 32
3.6.3 Comparative negligence 33
3.7 Multiple parties liability 34
3.7.2 Joint and several liability 34
4.2 Abnormally dangerous activities 36
Preventing Retribution
Compensating the victim
Increasing safety
Deterrence
Punishing the tortfeasor (specific deterrence: Deterring the wrongdoer individually)
Deterring future torts (general deterrence: People become aware of general compensation paid and people are more careful).
Avoiding societal economic costs
Prevent people from falling back on society after injury
Economic
Property damages
Lost wages
Bills: medical, funeral etc.
Non-economic damages
Physical: scars, loss of use, death
Emotional: pain, depression, anxiety
Reputational: defamation
Nominal damages: symbolic, indicates that one party is wrong
Compensatory damages: designed to make P whole insomuch as compensation can do
Punitive damages: to punish the tortfeasor, can be adjusted depending on D’s wealth
Exclude: spasm, sleep/unconscious actions, manipulation of the actor’s body by others
E.g. faint and fall
Include:
reactions to emergencies: somebody coming at me, I put my hand out
responses to threats and fear: people threaten me with a gun to hit another
Volitional act is not about the end or intermediate result of the act
P needs to prove that D acts with the purpose to cause the consequence or that D knows or should have known with substantial certainty that the act will cause the consequence.
Intentional tort or recklessness distinction
Some industrial activities that involve a high risk of harm may reasonably encompass situations that fall within the scope of an intentional tort rather than recklessness if the following is demonstrated:
Knowledge by the employer of the existence of a dangerous process, procedure, instrumentality or condition within its business operation;
knowledge by the employer that if the employee is subjected by his employment to such dangerous process, procedure, instrumentality or condition, then harm to the employee will be a substantial certainty;
the employer, under such circumstances, and with such knowledge, did act to require the employee to continue to perform the dangerous task
Deliberate removal by the employer of an equipment safety guard is evidence, the presumption of which may be rebutted, of an act committed with the intent to injure another.
Recklessness: conduct creates a known risk that can be reduced by relatively modest precautions.
Actual causation = but for causation: cause in fact of the plaintiff’s injury
Intentional tort only has actual causation
Legal causation = proximate causation: legally fair to hold the defendant liable for the injury
Injury: invasion of legally protected interest of another
Harm: loss or detriment in fact
Damages: what the P claims for, in dollars
always consider damages in the injury part
An actor is subject to liability to another for battery if he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other directly or indirectly results.
An actor is subject to liability to another for assault if he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and the other is thereby put in such imminent apprehension.
An assault usually precedes battery.
Act
Intent FORK: dual/ single intent
Dual intent (modern trend): intend the contact and harm.
Transferred intent (Hall v. McBryde):
(Intend a different kind of consequence) If an act is done with the intention of inflicting upon another an offensive but not a harmful bodily contact, or of putting another in apprehension of either a harmful or offensive bodily contact, and such act causes a bodily contact to the other, the actor is liable to the other for a battery although the act was not done with the intention of bringing about the resulting bodily harm.
(Intend a harm to a third party) If the P acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with a third...
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