#11387 - Intentional Torts - Long Torts Outline

Intentional Torts

1. Battery

1. Contact w/ person different than intended

   1. Talmage v. Smith

      1. The fact that the injury resulted to another than was intended does not relieve the defendant from responsibility.

1. Cases Contrasting Restatement v. Vosburg Approach

   1. Wagner v. Utah: Embraced Vosburg approach to battery in that it held a mentally impaired man who attached another person without reason was liable for battery since he intended the contact with the defendant. Whether or not he intended to

   2. harm the plaintiff was irrelevant.

   3. White v. Muniz: Embraced the Restatement approach in that the court did not hold a mentally impaired Alzheimer’s patient liable for battery for assaulting his caregiver because “the law requires that he both intended the contact and that he intended it to be harmful or offensive”.

2. Indirect/Unconventional Battery

   1. White v. University of Idaho (Air Piano)

      1. Is the act of playing the air piano on the back of someone unlawful?

         1. YES, if the contact is inappropriate to the time, place, or circumstance, which it was.

   2. Garret v. Dailey (Moving Chair): Woman brought suit against a five year old boy for moving her chair as she had begun the process of sitting down, causing her to fall and hit the ground, fracturing her hip.

      1. Court held that the boy’s action constituted battery. Battery= intentional infliction of a harmful bodily contact upon another.

         1. If the plaintiff proved that the boy moved the chair while she was in the act of sitting down, the boy’s action would have been for the purpose or with the intent of causing the plaintiff’s bodily contact with the ground

            1. A battery would be established if, in addition to the plaintiff’s fall, t was proved that when the boy moved the chair, he knew with substantial certainty that the plaintiff would attempt to sit down where the chair had been.

   3. Shaw v. Brown Tobbacco Corp (second-hand smoke): Court held that the defendant Tobacco Company was not liable for battery or the second hand smoke he inhaled and developed lung cancer as a result. Court held that the tobacco company did not know with a substantial degree of certainty that the second hand smoke would touch a particular non-smoker. (If a tobacco corp could be liable for battery, then so could gun manufacturers, knife manufacturers, lead pipe manufacturers etc.)

   4. Leictman v. WLW Jacor Comm.: Court held that a radio host who intentionally blew smoke in the face of an anti-smoking advocate was liable for battery since the defendant intended to cause harmful contact. Also held that no matter how trivial the incident, such constitutes a battery even if the damages are only $1.

      1. Difference between Leictman and Shaw:

         1. In Leictman, someone intentionally blew smoke in the face of someone. Someone may have intentionally blew smoke in the face of someone in Shaw as well, but the tobacco company is not liable for that.

2. Assault

2. Remember, there need to be some damages in order to recover, however even with very limited damages the assaulter is responsible to the assaulted for something.

3. Trespass

3. Dougherty v. Stepp (p.11)

   1. Defendant entered the unenclosed land of the plaintiff, with a surveyor and chain carriers, and surveyed party of the land, claiming it his own. Lower court held not to be a trespass

      1. On appeal, court held that every unauthorized, and therefore unlawful, entry into the close of another is a trespass and every trespass infers some damage, if nothing more than the treading down of grass

4. In Public Service Co. of Colorado v. Van Wyk, the plaintiff sued in trespass for the harm attributable to the noise and radiation from an upgrade in the public service’s utility system. Court held that in order to constitute an intangible trespass, [above definition].

   1. 2 Ways to Make out a Trespass Case for an Intangible Intrusion:

      1. Prove that some tangible part of the intangible thing landed on your land

      2. Prove that the odor/radiation/etc. someone caused physical damage to your land.

      3. If neither of these hold true, and instead the odor interfered unreasonably with the use of your land, you may have a nuisance case

      4. Mozst courts will deny claims of intangible trespasses, they are usually nuisances.

   2. If an intangible intrusion did not cause a physical harm to the property, then you do not have a trespass case, but may have a nuisance case.

5. Unconvential Trespasses

   1. Trespass via Overhang (Smith v. Smith)

      1. In Smith v. Smith, defendant was adjudged a trespasser when the eaves of his barn overhung the plaintiff’s land

   2. Trespass via Overflight (Neiswonger v. Goodyear Tire Co.)

      1. Airplane overflights within 500 feet of the ground, in violation of air traffic rules, were also treated as common law trespass.

   3. Trespass via unlawful act on the premises (Brown v. Dellinger)

      1. Two children, ages 7 and 8, were held liable for the loss of plaintiff’s $28,000 home. Court held that the acts of the minor defendants in bringing matches onto the premises of the plaintiff and igniting the fire in the charcoal burner in plaintiff’s garage were all voluntary and purposeful and had sufficient capacity to do even at their young age.

         1. “Their acts of igniting an unauthorized fire on plaintiff’s premises made them trespassers, and they must be held civilly liable for the consequences which directly followed from their unauthorized acts of igniting the fire in question”

   4. Cleveland Park
      

4. Torts in General

   1. Damages

      1. You have to prove causation before you get to damages. If there is no causation between the damages and the unlawful act, damages are unwarranted.

         1. Tort Rule of Damages: You can recover up to the full amount of the damages you incurred

            1. “Offender Pays All”: IN a tort, one is liable for all damages...