Intentional Torts
This mental state requirement for intentional torts can be proven by showing either Purpose or Substantial Certainty (knowledge) that the resulting harm would occur.
What is Intent?
In a negligence claim, this element must always be proven, requiring either physical or financial loss to the plaintiff.
What are Actual Damages?
This test of cause-in-fact is best used for a single defendant and requires the plaintiff to prove that "but for" the defendant's negligence, the harm would not have occurred.
What is the "But For" Test?
You are liable to the full extent of the harm inflicted, even for unforeseeable consequences, based on this legal doctrine.
What is the Eggshell-Skull Legal Doctrine?
The category of torts summarized as “You Broke It, You Buy It,” where liability is imposed regardless of the defendant's intent or failure to use reasonable care.
What is Strict Liability?
This intentional tort is the intentional infliction of a harmful or offensive contact with a plaintiff’s person, where the intention of harm is not the same as the intent to commit the tort.
What is Battery?
A defendant's mental state characterized by being consciously aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk, and proceeding anyway.
What is Recklessness?
This test of cause-in-fact is used when multiple defendants contributed to an indivisible injury.
What is the Substantial Factor Test?
The rule that a defendant engaged in reasonable self-defense is not liable for injury caused to an innocent third party bystander.
What is the Injury to Innocent Bystanders Rule?
According to the Third Restatement of Torts Section 23, if you keep this type of animal, you are strictly liable for all damages caused.
What is a Wild Animal?
This doctrine makes a defendant liable for battery to a person they accidentally hit, even if they originally intended to hit someone else.
What is Transferred Intent?
This standard dictates that a minor is held to the level of a reasonable child of the same age, intelligence, and experience, unless they are engaged in adult activities.
What is the Reasonable Child Standard?
This key principle holds that if a defendant causes a danger, they are liable for injuries created during the subsequent emergency response, as described in the Wagner Cardozo Opinion.
What is Danger Invites Rescue (or the Tuttle Doctrine)?
A defendant who invokes the Doctrine of Necessity to enter the land of another to save property is not liable for technical trespass, but must still pay for this.
What is Actual Damage?
An activity, such as blasting dynamite, that results in strict liability because it is inherently dangerous, even if all reasonable care is used.
What is an Abnormally Dangerous Activity?
This intentional tort requires the apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact, but specifically, no contact is actually made.
What is Assault?
This exception to Informed Consent allows a doctor not to warn a patient of a material risk if the doctor believes the warning would cause the patient to become hysterical or suffer an adverse psychosomatic effect.
What is the Paternalistic Exception?
If a defendant's negligence creates a risk, and a third party intervenes, the defendant is still liable if their negligence created a foreseeable risk of that intervention.
What is an Intervening Cause?
In most American jurisdictions, under this version of Comparative Negligence, a plaintiff who is found to be more than 50% at fault recovers absolutely nothing.
What is Majority Modified Comparative Negligence?
This intentional tort involves the wrongful interference with the plaintiff’s right to exclusive possession of their personal property, and the plaintiff must show damage, deprivation, or decrease in utility.
What is Trespass to Chattels?
For this exception to Trespass to Land, an aggrieved party must prove physical damage to the property, even though damages are generally inferred for other types of trespass.
What is Intangible Trespass?
The doctrine that, when successfully established, creates a permissible inference of negligence because the event ordinarily doesn't occur without negligence and the instrumentality was in the defendant's exclusive control.
What is Res Ipsa Loquitur?
Under this proximate cause test, a negligent defendant is liable for all direct consequences of their negligence, even if the damages themselves were not foreseeable.
What is the Directness Test (or the rule in Polemis)?
Damages intended to punish the defendant and deter reprehensible misconduct, which typically do not exceed four times the compensatory damages.
What are Punitive Damages?
This doctrine dictates that nuisances will not be actionable if they are necessary for the common and ordinary use and occupation of land.
What is the Live and Let Live Doctrine?