Introduction to Intentional Torts, Negligence, and Specialized Liability

These flashcards provide modern tort law vocabulary including intentional torts, negligence standards, products liability, defamation, and privacy torts based on the lecture transcript.

Voluntary act

An affirmative, conscious physical movement, not a reflex or unconscious spasm.

Intent

D desires the consequences of the act or knows they are substantially certain to occur; children can form intent, and motive is irrelevant.

Actual causation

D's act was a but-for cause or substantial factor in bringing about the injury, making D liable for all resulting consequences.

Transferred intent

A rule where intent transfers when D intends a tort against one person but instead commits a different tort, harms a different person, or both; applies to battery, assault, false imprisonment, trespass to land, and trespass to chattels.

Battery

D intentionally causes harmful or offensive contact to P’s person, or intentionally creates imminent apprehension of such contact, and the contact occurs.

Assault

D commits an act that intentionally causes P to suffer reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery, where P perceives the threat and D has the apparent ability to carry it out.

False imprisonment

D intentionally and completely confines P to a bounded area against P’s will, caused by D's act or omission, where P has no reasonable means of escape.

Shopkeeper’s privilege

A merchant with reasonable suspicion that P stole or attempted to steal property may detain P for a reasonable time and in a reasonable manner.

Intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED)

D intentionally or recklessly engages in extreme and outrageous conduct that causes P severe emotional distress; this is the only intentional tort requiring actual damages.

Trespass to land

D intentionally commits an act that causes a tangible physical invasion of P’s real property, including the surface, airspace, and subterranean space.

Trespass to chattel

D intentionally interferes with P’s possessory right to personal property through dispossession or intermeddling (damaging the property).

Conversion

A substantial interference with P’s possessory right to personal property involving a longer deprivation of possession, destruction, or total alteration.

Public necessity

An absolute defense where D interferes with P’s property to protect the public from harm, cutting off all liability.

Private necessity

D interferes with P’s property to protect D's own interests where the threatened harm is greater than the harm caused; D is liable for actual damages.

Cardozo (Majority) view

The rule that D owes a duty of care only to plaintiffs within the foreseeable zone of danger.

Andrews (Minority) view

The rule that D owes a duty to everyone in society because everyone is foreseeable.

Firefighter's rule

Bars professional rescuers from recovering for injuries caused by risks inherent in the rescue job.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress (NIED) Bystander action

Duty owed if P was present at the scene, witnessed the accident, suffered emotional distress, and had a close relationship with the victim.

Negligence per se

A statute replaces the reasonable person standard if P is within the class of persons the statute protects and the injury is the type the statute was designed to prevent.

Invitee

One who enters land open to the public or for economic benefit; landowner has a duty to use reasonable care, inspect, and make dangerous conditions safe.

Standard of care for children

Judged by a reasonable child of the same age, experience, and intelligence, unless engaging in an adult activity.

Attractive nuisance

A duty of ordinary care to protect children from artificial conditions if the owner knows children frequent the area, the condition poses a risk children cannot appreciate, and remediation cost is low.

Hand formula

A method to determine breach occurring if the burden of avoiding harm is less than the probability of harm multiplied by the magnitude of loss: $B < P \times L$.

Res ipsa loquitur

A doctrine creating an inference of negligence if the accident is typically the result of negligence, the instrumentality was in D’s exclusive control, and P did not contribute to the injury.

Superseding cause

An unforeseeable, intervening act that breaks the chain of causation and cuts off D's liability.

Eggshell skull rule

A rule that D is liable for the full extent of physical damages even if the magnitude of harm was unforeseeable, taking P as D finds P.

Pure comparative negligence

A defense where P’s recovery is reduced by P's exact percentage of fault.

Modified comparative negligence

A defense where P's recovery is reduced by fault but completely barred if P's fault exceeds $50\%$.

Abnormally dangerous activity

An activity not in common usage that creates a foreseeable risk of serious harm even when reasonable care is exercised, triggering strict liability.

Manufacturing defect

A product defect where the unit deviates from its intended design and emerges more dangerous than other units.

Design defect

A defect where the entire product line is unsafe for its intended use, proven by the Consumer Expectation Test or the Risk-Utility Test.

Learned intermediary rule

A manufacturer is relieved of products liability if they warn the prescribing doctor, who then conveys or fails to convey the warning to P.

Implied warranty of merchantability

An implied warranty that goods are fit for their ordinary purpose.

Fitness for particular purpose

An implied warranty applying if D knows P's specific purpose and that P is relying on D's judgment to select the goods.

Libel

Permanent written, broadcast, or recorded defamation where general damages are presumed.

Slander per se

Spoken defamation involving trade competence, crimes of moral turpitude, loathsome diseases, or unchastity, where special damages are not required.

Actual malice

The standard of fault for a public official or figure in defamation, requiring knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.

Private nuisance

A substantial and unreasonable interference with P's use and enjoyment of P's land.

Commercial appropriation

Unauthorized use of P's name or picture for D's commercial advantage.

Intrusion into seclusion

An intentional, highly offensive intrusion into P's private sphere or zone of privacy.

Respondent superior

A doctrine making an employer liable for employee negligence occurring within the scope of employment.

Frolic vs. detour

Detours are minor personal deviations leaving the employer liable; frolics are major deviations where only the employee is liable.

Fraudulent misrepresentation

A material misrepresentation made with knowledge of falsity or intent to mislead, causing P’s reasonable reliance.

Malicious prosecution

Initiating criminal or civil proceedings without probable cause and with malice, where P prevailed on the merits and suffered damages.

Loss of consortium

A claim by a spouse for the loss of companionship, comfort, society, and sexual relations resulting from D's tortious injury to their partner.