Chapter 1
Tort law belongs to this broad classification of the legal system, distinguishing it from the state-prosecuted criminal response to injuries.
What is civil law?
The intentional tort of battery primarily protects this specific recognized legal right of an individual.
What is bodily integrity?
These four elements make up the baseline framework that a plaintiff must prove to win a typical accidental injury lawsuit.
What are duty, breach, causation, and damages?
This phrase describes an unexcused violation of a specific safety statute, which the court adopts as conclusive proof that an actor breached their duty of care.
What is negligence per se?
This standard threshold inquiry tests whether a plaintiff’s injury would have occurred in the physical absence of the defendant’s substandard conduct.
What is the "but-for" test?
Professor J. Clark Kelso identifies these two concepts as the "twin pillars of tort law" that frequently conflict with one another.
What are compensation and deterrence?
This intentional tort operates as a "touching of the mind," protecting a person’s interest in being free from the apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact.
What is assault?
Established in Vaughan v. Menlove, this external, objective legal standard supplants an individual's personal, below-average judgment or intelligence.
What is the reasonable person standard (or ordinary prudence)?
In The T.J. Hooper, Judge Learned Hand famously declared that while this industry indicator is persuasive evidence of proper diligence, it is strictly never its absolute measure.
What is industry custom (or general practice)?
Under Kingston v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, this causation doctrine prevents two separate, independent tortfeasors from escaping liability when their concurrent acts are both fully capable of producing the single, entire harm.
What is the doctrine of multiple sufficient causes?
According to empirical data cited by Michael J. Saks, this benchmark metric represents the standard trial rate, demonstrating that trials are actually a chief aberration in the tort system.
What is fewer than 10 out of 100 cases (or under 10%)?
This legal fiction applies when an actor intends to commit an assault or battery against one person but unexpectedly hits a third party instead.
What is the doctrine of transferred intent?
This algebraic formula balances the burden of precaution against the probability of an injury multiplied by the gravity of the potential loss.
What is the Learned Hand formula (B<PL)?
This Latin phrase translates to "the thing speaks for itself," allowing a jury to infer negligence purely from circumstantial evidence.
What is res ipsa loquitur?
This theory of joint liability, outlined in Restatement Section 876, applies to those who actively take part in a common design or provide substantial assistance or encouragement to a principal wrongdoer.
What is concert of action (or concerted action)?
This procedural device, usually filed after discovery is completed, eliminates the need for a trial entirely when there are no genuine disputes about the facts.
What is a motion for summary judgment?
Under White v. Muniz, Colorado is among the jurisdictions requiring this standard for battery, meaning the actor must intend both the physical contact and that the contact be harmful or offensive.
What is the dual intent requirement?
Per Robinson v. Lindsay, a minor will lose the protection of the flexible child standard of care and be held to an adult standard when engaging in this type of conduct.
What is an inherently dangerous (or adult) activity?
To invoke res ipsa loquitur, the plaintiff must prove the accident is of a type that doesn't ordinarily happen without negligence, and that the causative instrumentality was under this level of control by the defendant.
What is exclusive control?
Established in Summers v. Tice, this procedural doctrine shifts the burden of proof to the defendants when a plaintiff proves that two or more negligent actors shot in his direction, but only one could have caused the physical injury.
What is alternative liability?
In this iconic, widely misunderstood lawsuit, a jury initially awarded a plaintiff $2.7 million in punitive damages after she suffered severe lap burns from a fast-food beverage.
What is the McDonald’s hot coffee case?
This affirmative defense protects merchants from false imprisonment claims when they temporarily detain a shopper on reasonable suspicion of retail fraud.
What is the shopkeeper's privilege?
While tort law adjusts its standard of care for individuals with physical handicaps like blindness, it traditionally refuses to make allowances for adults with this type of deficiency.
What is a mental disability (or mental illness)?
In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Wright, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a company's internal manual cannot be used to define ordinary care because its corporate rules may do this.
What is exceed the objective standard of ordinary care?
This specialized, several-liability theory bypasses traditional identification barriers by assigning liability based on the generic percentage of a fungible product supplied to a geographic market.
What is market share liability?