Tort(urou)s Rules
Duty is a question for the _____ to decide.
What is the judge?
This type of jurisdiction can be acquired through a game of tag.
What is in personam?
Don't try this if your facts are in dispute.
What is a motion for summary judgment?
This form of offer, often between family or friends, lacks consideration.
What is a gratuitous promise?
In this opinion balancing the scales of justice, there is a dynamite dissent.
What is Palsgraf v. LIRR?
When evidence of defendant's negligence hits you like a barrel, the judge will apply this Latin maxim.
What is res ipsa loquitur?
This doctrine prevents courts from shoehorning a defendant into a forum unless their conduct creates purposeful ties there.
What is minimum contacts?
A defendant files this motion, insisting that even if every fact in the complaint is accepted as true, the law offers the plaintiff no relief whatsoever.
What is a motion to dismiss?
This doctrine excuses a party when performance is still technically possible, but the mutually understood value of the deal has been wiped out.
What is frustration of purpose?
Cardozo held that most contracts imply a good-faith effort to perform, even if a 20th century influencer disagrees.
What is Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon?
A bus driver getting their passenger home safely in a hail storm is an example of this form of duty.
What is a special relationship?
This rule requires attorneys not to bullshit their judges, even if their client is a liar.
What is a motion for a new trial?
This type of contract dodges the mailbox rule entirely, requiring that an acceptance reach the offeror to be effective.
What is an option?
Justice Cardozo has said, "The final cause of law is ___"
The Holmesian quote that "even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over" distinguishes this form of tort.
What is an intentional harm?
As evidenced by Celotex, the non-moving party is required to meet this evidentiary standard in response to a motion for summary judgment.
After Ashcroft v. Iqbal clarified the heightened plausibility standard for pleadings, a defendant might file this request to remove legally insufficient allegations from a complaint.
What is a motion to strike?
Under this UCC provision, it's implied that a product will live up to snuff.
What is UCC 2:314?
(1) Unless excluded or modified, a warranty that the goods shall be merchantable is implied in a contract for their sale if the seller is a merchant with respect to goods of that kind. Under this section the serving for value of food or drink to be consumed either on the premises or elsewhere is a sale.
In Cardozo’s opinion in Jacob & Youngs v. Kent, the contractor avoided forfeiture because his deviation was minor, illustrating this doctrine that awards damages based on the difference in value rather than cost of completion.
What is substantial performance?
Sometimes contrasted with foreseeability, this principle focuses on whether an independent act interrupts the causal chain, severing the defendant’s responsibility.
What is a superseding cause?
This type of class action is often called a "mass tort."
What is Rule 23(b)(3)?
Reserved for the rare case where the evidence permits only one legally permissible outcome, this judicial tool lets the court substitute its own judgment for the jury’s when the verdict has no reasonable evidentiary support.
What is JNOV (judgment notwithstanding the verdict)?
Before the parol evidence rule can exclude anything, a court first decides this threshold question: whether the writing was intended as this kind of final expression of the parties’ agreement.
What is a complete integration?
The Latin phrase "in articulo mortis" means that "what is said in the moment of death is assumed to be true." In a case involving a man’s bedside promise to donate money, the court refused to treat his dying words as creating an enforceable contract, declining to follow Justice Cardozo’s more generous approach to charitable pledges.
What is Congregation Kadimah Toras-Moshe v. De Leo?