Adventures in Law School - Intentional Torts

Welcome to the first real installment of Adventure's in Law School!

As promised, I'm going to be taking you through my journey into the study of law, and I'll provide you with as in-depth an explanation as I can of legal concepts and rules as I can. My goal is to provide all you reading through these installments with what amounts to a basic law school education. I apologize for not having put my first installment out sooner, but, as you can imagine, law school is tough!

Today we're going to be talking about intentional torts, but before we do, let's take a minute to ask a simple question: what the heck are torts anyway?

What Are Torts?

Torts are civil wrongs that result in a liability to the party doing the wrong. According to Black's Law Dictionary (Fifth Ed.), a tort is:
1. A civil wrong, other than breach of contract, for which a remedy may be obtained, usually in the form of damages; a breach of a duty that the law imposes on persons who stand in a particular relation to one another.
2. (pl.) The branch of law dealing with such wrongs.

Tort law handles civil litigation. Unlike criminal law, which deals with conduct that is a violation of statutory law and can be punishable with imprisonment, tort law deals with people making claims of wrongs and seeking restitution for those wrong. A person cannot be imprisoned for a tort claim. Instead, a plaintiff makes a claim against a defendant, arguing that the defendant has committed some wrong against them and that the plaintiff has cause to compel the defendant to pay them for it. Claims are generally adjudicated in a trial court before a jury, though in certain circumstances a judgment can be reached without a jury. Unlike criminal law, where a claim must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the burden of proof is less for torts, which only require a preponderance of evidence to prove a claim. However, as in criminal law, that burden of proof rests on the party bringing the claim forward, which tort law is the plaintiff. We'll be discussing civil procedure and the circumstances in which a judge decides in another post. Once judgment is entered, the damages are decided.

Intentional Torts

Today, we're going to be discussing intentional torts. Intentional torts are civil wrongs arising from intentional acts, the goal of which is to cause harm to someone or, as in the case of assault, cause someone to have apprehension of imminent harm. Intentional torts also include trespasses to property. Assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tresspass to property, trespass to chattels, and conversion are the six types of intentional torts.

The big difference between intentional and unintentional torts is, of course, the element of intent. For a tort to be intentional, the person that caused the civil wrong (the tortfeasor or defendant) must have either purposefully carried out the act to cause the wrong or known to a substantial degree of certainty that the wrong would come from the act and chose to do it anyway (also known as "recklessly"). Moreover, intent can be transferred. For example, if Gary shot at Jake, but instead hit Tom, Gary would be liable for the harm done to Tom. This same principle also applies to criminal law.

Assault

Assault is composed of three elements:

• "A volitional act by an individual..." - The tortfeasor must voluntarily act against the victim. Acts of omission, or failures to act, are not considered intentional torts. Moreover, for assault, mere words are not enough to constitute the act necessary to maintain a claim. Words must be accompanied by some overt physical act on the part of the defendant.
• "Causing a reasonable apprehension of physical contact in another..." - The victim (or plaintiff) must have a reasonable apprehension of physical contact occuring as a result of the act. It's important to note two things about reasonable apprehension. First, the apprehension must be one that a reasonable person under the same or similar circumstances would appear. This is what is referred to as an objective test; the particular circumstances or traits of the individual plaintiff do not factor into whether apprehension is reasonable or not. Second, apprehension is different from fear. Unlike fear, which is the conclusion that an act will succeed in making physical contact, apprehension is only the conclusion that an attempt to make physical contact is imminent whether or not physical contact actually occurs.
• "Done with the intent to cause that apprehension in the other." - As we talked about earlier, the act has to be purposeful or reckless; either the defendant acted for the purpose of causing apprehension, or the defendant should have known that the act would cause apprehension.

Battery

Battery is composed of three elements:

• "A volitional act by an individual..." - The tortfeasor must voluntarily act against the victim. This can be accomplished either by the defendant himself, or by something within the defendant's intimate control, such as a baseball bat or other tool or weapon.
• "Intended to cause harmful or offensive physical contact with another or an object intimately controlled by another..." - The defendant either purposefully acts to cause physical contact with the plaintiff or knows to a substantial degree of certainty that the act will result in physical contact. Purposefulness or recklessness refers specifically to whether the defendant's act would result in physical contact. Notice that battery includes harmful contact and offensive contact; battery also includes things that are considered a trespass against the person which are not particularly harmful, such as spitting or cutting a chunk of hair. Something that offends a person's dignity that results in physical contact qualifies as battery. Battery also extends to things intimately controlled by the plaintiff, such as a purse or backpack.
• "And resulting in actual contact." - The act by the defendant has to result in actual contact. If contact does not occur, the tort is actually an assault and not a battery. This is the defining line between the two very similar torts.

False Imprisonment

False imprisonment is composed of four elements:

• "A volitional act by an individual..." - The tortfeasor must voluntarily act against the victim.
• "With the intent to confine another person or persons within boundaries fixed by the defendant..." - As with other intentional torts, the required intent is either purposeful or reckless. Moreover, the confinement requirement can be satisfied simply by keeping the plaintiff or plaintiffs within a designated area. A defendant can confine the plaintiff by preventing them from leaving a small area in the middle of a field, for example. Of course, threatening to use physical force or using actual force to prevent a plaintiff from leaving the area designated by the defendant constitutes confinement.
• "Which actually results in such confinement..." - As with the difference between battery and assault, a plaintiff must actually be confined in order to maintain a claim of false imprisonment. If the defendant attempts to confine the plaintiff to an area, and the plaintiff simply ignores them and leaves, that would not qualify as false imprisonment. For the plaintiff to actually be confined, he or she must be prevented from leaving the area by the defendant.
• "And of which the other is conscious of or is harmed by." - To be falsely imprisoned, the plaintiff must either know that he or she is confined by the defendant or, if not conscious of the confinement, is harmed by the confinement. This seems like an odd conditional; how can one not be conscious of confinement? Let's use an example. Adam, a storeowner, asks Brian, his employee, to inventory the cold storage in the back of the store. Forgetting that Brian is in the store, he locks the cold storage and leaves the store. Brian is exposed to the extreme cold long enough that he becomes susceptible to pneumonia. While Brian knows that he's locked in the freezer, he's not conscious of Adam's action of locking the freezer door. However, he is still harmed by it, which makes Adam liable, even if Adam were to suddenly remember he'd locked the freezer and return to let Brian out.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED)

Intentional infliction of emotional distress is composed of four elements:

• "An intentional or reckless act by the individual..." - The tortfeasor must voluntarily act against the victim and must either intend to cause emotional distress to the plaintiff, or he or she must know with a substantial degree of certainty that the act will result in emotional distress.
• "That is extreme or outrageous in character..." - IIED is similar to assault in that no physical contact has to occur in order for a plaintiff to maintain a claim. However, unlike assault where a threat of harm is imminent, IIED addresses more remote threats or harms arising merely from the character of the act taken by the defendant. For this reason, tort law requires that the act be so incredibly damaging that it offends the sensibility of a reasonable person. An example of this would be someone phoning their friend's mother and acting as though her child had just been killed in a horrific car wreck, which she needs to come to immediately. While the two could simply say it was a prank, the character of the prank is inexcusably callous and would, without a doubt, create serious emotional distress in the plaintiff.
• "Which is the actual cause of the distress..." - The act of the defendant has to be direct cause of the emotional distress. Using the example from above, if the mother were to get into a car accident and suffer a mental breakdown as a result of serious injury sustained in the wreck, her child and their friend would not be liable for IIED relating to the emotional distress of the injuries.
• "And which results in severe emotional distress in another." - The harm suffered by the plaintiff in cases of IIED is not the apprehension suffered in torts of assault. Rather, severe emotional distress relates mainly to emotional trauma. However, the specific emotional trauma suffered has to manifest in some objective, measurable way; simply being upset is not sufficient. Generally, significant changes in behavior, mental disorders, or physical symptoms arising from mental issues like depression or anxiety are sufficient to prove this element.

Trespass To Property

Trespass to property (land) is composed of one element:

• "An individual or an object in the control of an individual intentionally or recklessly enters the land of another." - Trespass to property occurs when a person or something under the person's control crosses the boundary line of another's land. The only requisite here for intent is that the defendant meant to set foot across that line. The defendant doesn't even need to be aware that the land belonged to someone else; at common law, it is understood that the defendant either knew or should have known that the land upon which he or she was entering belonged to someone else. Moreover, no harm has to occur to the land in order to maintain a trespass claim. In other words, trespass is a tort per se; the act alone is sufficient to prove the claim. There are, of course, defenses to the claim of trespass, but we'll hold off on going into greater detail on those until we cover defenses more broadly. What's also interesting to note is that, historically, the tort of battery was considered a trespass against a person.

Trespass To Chattels

Trespass to chattel (movable personal property) is composed of three elements:

• "An intentional act by an individual..." - The act must have been done either purposefully or recklessly. Additionally, as in trespass to property, not knowing the chattel was owned by someone else or a defendant's mistaken belief that he or she had license to possess it do not negate the intent element. As with trespass to property, there are defenses to this as well, which will be covered in a later chapter.
• "To dispossess another of the chattel..." - The act of trespassing against chattel has two conditions, either of which must be fulfilled; this is the first. To dispossess someone of their chattel, a defendant needs only remove it from their possession. There is no requirement that this dispossession has to be permanent, only that the defendant has interfered with the possession of the chattel by its rightful owner. "Borrowing" a neighbor's car without their permission would be an example of dispossession.
• "Or using or intermeddling with a chattel in the possession of another." - This is the second condition that may be fulfilled in order to maintain a claim of trespass to chattel. For this element, a plaintiff only has to demonstrate that the defendant was using or intermeddling (making contact) with the chattel. An example of intermeddling would be bashing a neighbor's car window in.

Conversion

Conversion is composed of three elements:

• "An intentional act by an individual..." - The act must have been done either purposefully or recklessly. The same standard for intent in trespass to chattel is present in conversion as well.
• "To exercise dominion or control over a chattel..." - Essentially, this is establishes that conversion must take the form of trespass to chattel by dispossession. To satisfy the first two elements of conversion, a plaintiff must satisfy the first two elements of trespass to chattel: an intentional act to dispossess.
• "Which so seriously interferes with the right of another to control it that the individual may justly be required to pay the other the full value of the chattel." - This is where conversion expands beyond mere trespass. Unlike trespass by dispossession, conversion requires a much more serious and harmful interference. A trespass plaintiff can only sue for damages that relate to interference with his possessory interest; that is, he can sue for an amount much less than the full value of the chattel. In conversion, a plaintiff can and sue for the full value of the chattel at the time the act took place. Accordingly, the interference with the plaintiff's possession must be much more severe. The factors that regulate the severity of the interference, and thus the defendant's liability to pay, are:
  • the extent and duration of the defendant's exercise of dominion or control;
  • the defendant's intent to assert a right in fact inconsistent with the other's right of control;
  • the defendant's good faith;
  • the extent and duration of the resulting interference with the other's right of control;
  • the harm done to the chattel;
  • the inconvenience and expense caused to the other.

I want to take note of the third factor in consideration of the seriousness of the interference: the defendant's good faith. If the defendant can demonstrate that there was a justification or excuse as to why the dispossession happened, or that it happened in such a way that the defendant couldn't have reasonably foreseen the severity of the interference, this can mitigate a claim of conversion.

Summary

So, to recap the intentional torts and their elements:

• Assault - A volitional act by an individual causing a reasonable apprehension of physical contact in another, done with the intent to cause that apprehension in the other.
• Battery - A volitional act by an individual intended to cause harmful or offensive physical contact with the another or an object intimately controlled by another and resulting in actual contact.
• False Imprisonment - A volitional act by individual with the intent to confine another person or persons within boundaries fixed by the defendant, which actually results in such confinement and of which the other is conscious of or is harmed by.
• Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress - An intentional act by an individual that is extreme or outrageous in character, which is the actual cause of the distress and results in severe emotional distress in another.
• Trespass to Property - The individual or an object in the control of the individual intentionally or recklessly enters the land of another.
• Trespass to Chattel - An intentional act by an individual, to dispossess another of the chattel or using or intermeddling with a chattel in the possession of another.
• Conversion - An intentional act by an individual to exercise dominion or control over a chattel, which so seriously interferes with the right of another to control it that the individual may justly be required to pay the other the full value of the chattel.

I hope this article shed some light on intentional torts. The next installment of Adventures in Law School is going to be going over what comprises the major bulk of tort cases: negligence. It's a big subject with a lot of ground to cover, so we'll be taking a whole installment, and probably a couple more, just for that. Join me again next time!

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