Torts
Class Notes
Last time, we left off on battery.
Intent = substantial certainty that harm will occur
You’re
assume to intent contacts that are substantially certain to occur under those
circumstances.
Merely
denying that you intended to do something won’t necessarily excuse you.
Intentional
torts are often context-based.
A
tough issue with battery
Sometimes
it’s hard to find out whether or not the injured consented to the contact.
“Egg
shell” or “thin skull” rule – if you intend to cause harm to somebody, and the
harm is greater than you expected it to be, you’re responsible for the full
consequences of your actions.
Hypothetical
– the piano teacher and the student. The
student “plays piano” on the teacher’s back, and the teacher is severely
injured. Here we have a playful, yet slightly
offensive touch. But do we expect this
type of relationship between a piano teacher and student? Was this a first time occurrence? Let’s say the student didn’t know the teacher
had a back problem. Or let’s say the
teacher knew she had a problem: isn’t she the cheapest cost avoider? Should she have told the student about her
condition? The court found that this was
battery.
If
there is intent to touch without intent, the jury will usually decide based on
the context whether or not the contact was meant to be harmful or offensive.
Therefore,
Vosburg suggests that the courts will substitute unlawfulness or perhaps
inappropriateness of the defendant’s conduct within that context for the defendant’s
intent. Also, keep in mind the extended
personality doctrine.
One
more hypothetical: Let’s say A doesn’t like B and A sets up a trap for B (tries
to get B to slip on soap). B is
injured. Is A liable for battery? What if A says he was playing a practical
joke and A thought B would think it was funny?
Wouldn’t most people just walk around the soap? Does it matter who gets hurt by the
soap? No, because of transferred
intent. This is a hard case. You couldn’t be substantially certain that
anyone would be harmed by this. Pulling
a chair out from under someone shows intent a lot more strongly than the
present case. If A doesn’t like B, you
have actual intent to cause harm.
Three
elements:
1. Intent to
confine
2. Bounded area
3. Awareness of
confinement
Big Town is a classic case of false imprisonment.
Where
in the structure of the
Issue: If Parvi didn’t remember
his confinement, did he suffer false imprisonment?
You
must be conscious to recover damages for false imprisonment under
Why
does Breitel dissent? We don’t want to
keep the police from being able to do their job. He’s fearful of imposing liability on the
police.
The
majority feels differently: they feel that this was not an appropriate use of
police discretion. They should have
taken him into the police station rather than drop him off any old place.
Why
is this false imprisonment? Police can
go beyond their authority. If the police
don’t formally arrest him, do they have the right to take him and move him
around? Why sue as an intentional tort
instead of negligence? You can get
punitive damages.
Do
you have to be aware of your confinement at the time of trial in order to
collect damages? No, but you must have
been aware of the confinement at the time it happened.
The
protocol nowadays is to arrest people under almost all circumstances.
What
if your baby is kidnapped and kept in a box for several hours? Could the baby collect on false imprisonment? What would be a rule that could take this
possibility into account? What if the
person was asleep the whole time they were confined? How about an adult who has taken a lot of
sleeping pills, and then they get kidnapped, moved, and beaten up, all while
they’re sleeping? What if the guy never
gets moved? What are the potential
shortcomings of this rule? There may be
harm later even if you didn’t experience harm at the time.
What
about the situation of the 16-year-old boy who is taken by a police officer to
a hospital other than the one the mother requested? There’s no false imprisonment here because
the mother doesn’t have any right to have her son taken to a particular hospital.
There’s
one other method of false imprisonment.
Say
I take your suitcase and put it in my car and you go along with me because I
have your stuff, even though you don’t want to go. Say you get in a car accident. Do you have any cause of action against me?
What
differentiates the case of the plaintiff setting off the security alarm and
staying at the store from the case of the plaintiff who gave the dealer her car
keys?
The
law values your property very highly. It’s
more important than we might have imagined before. This comes from common law notions about how
important land and possessions are to people.
This
is called duress of goods.
The
shoplifting analogy is closer to the hypothetical above.
Two
keys to the car dealer case: the dealer had a right to the car. Also, is it really believable that she had no
other way to get home? For example,
could she have called someone? Could she
have taken a bus? Could she have called
a cab? Does it make a difference whether
you do something voluntarily as opposed to against your will?
What
was Ms. Hardy’s big mistake? She agreed
to take the lie detector test and says that she would have stated to clarify
the situation. She also never asked to
leave. Her willingness to cooperate
undermines any threat. Moral
persuasion does not lead to false imprisonment. Does it make a difference that there was a
uniformed police officer present?
If Hardy had asked to leave or
made a move to leave and had been prevented from doing so, then false
imprisonment may lie.
Only
force or threats of force constitute false imprisonment.
Methods
of Confinement
·
Threats of physical force
·
Actual force
·
Duress of goods
·
Threats to your family members
Mrs.
Enright was sitting in a car.
Courts
rarely reach verdicts of false imprisonment against police officers. There is a pretty heavy presumption that
police officers have legal justification to make arrests.
Mrs.
Enright was convicted of violating the dog leash ordinance.
Does
it matter if he touches her? Should Mrs.
Graves have had to protest her arrest in order for him to be liable? We don’t want people to resist arrest as a
matter of policy. We’d rather have
people go quietly.
What
about “citizen’s arrests”? Is it lawful
to conduct a citizen’s arrest under any circumstances? What if the person who gets arrested did
commit the crime? What if the citizen
thinks you did something but they’re wrong?
A police officer, who has probable cause to arrest you but is shown
later to be wrong, will not be liable.
Would it be different for a private citizen? What about if the police officer is off-duty?
What
if the police officer did not have a reasonable suspicion?