intro to american law and reasoning midterm 1

martin edwards ole miss honors college

Battery — intent

Defendant must intend harmful/offensive contact or know with substantial certainty that it will occur. Merely creating a risk is not enough for intentional tort liability. Cases: Vosburg v. Putney; Garratt v. Dailey.

Battery — privilege/license

Contact that would ordinarily be wrongful may be privileged because of the circumstances; context matters. Vosburg: the classroom kick was outside the ordinary implied license of playground-type contact.

Unintentional injury / negligence

Modern negligence generally requires fault rather than automatically imposing liability whenever one's conduct causes injury. Cases: Case of the Thorns; Brown v. Kendall.

Reasonable person

Reasonableness is generally objective: what would a reasonably prudent person do under the circumstances? A defendant ordinarily cannot defend himself by saying he personally lacked ordinary judgment. Cases: Vaughan v. Menlove; Holmes.

Cost-benefit / Hand Formula

Ask whether B < P × L: burden of precaution versus probability of harm multiplied by magnitude of loss. Evaluate ex ante, from the position of a reasonable person, and consider social, not merely private, costs and benefits. Case: United States v. Carroll Towing.

Economic theory of accidents

Harm is reciprocal: preventing A from harming B can itself impose costs on A. The aim is to avoid the more serious social harm, considering transaction costs and the value of competing activities. Coase argues that with costless transactions the legal assignment of liability need not determine the ultimate allocation of resources, but transaction costs make legal rules consequential in the real world.

Cheapest cost avoider

Liability can be analyzed by asking which party is best situated to identify, compare, and reduce accident costs. Source: Calabresi & Hirschoff, Toward a Test for Strict Liability in Torts.

Custom

Industry custom is evidence of reasonable care, but it is not conclusive. An entire industry can lag behind reasonable safety; courts ultimately determine the standard of care. Case: The T.J. Hooper.

Negligence per se

Violation of an applicable safety statute can establish negligence when the statutory violation is connected to the type of harm the statute was designed to prevent. Case: Martin v. Herzog.

Proof / preponderance

A civil plaintiff generally must establish the elements by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. Thin statistical probability by itself can create problems; contextual evidence matters. Case: Howard v. Wal-Mart.

Res ipsa loquitur

The nature of an accident itself can sometimes permit an inference of negligence when the event ordinarily would not happen without negligence and the relevant instrumentality was associated with the defendant's control. Case: Byrne v. Boadle, involving a flour barrel falling from a warehouse.

Contributory negligence

Under traditional contributory negligence, the plaintiff's own negligence contributing to the injury can completely bar recovery.

Comparative negligence

Plaintiff's negligence reduces recovery according to fault. Pure comparative negligence allows recovery regardless of the plaintiff's percentage of fault, reduced accordingly. Case: Li v. Yellow Cab.

What counts as a crime?

Modern criminalization generally comes from legislatures and statutes; the older common-law approach permitted courts to recognize crimes. Case: Commonwealth v. Mochan, especially the majority versus Woodside dissent.

Mens rea presumption

Traditional crimes ordinarily require a culpable mental state even when the statute is unclear; courts should hesitate before treating traditional crimes as strict liability. Case: Morissette v. United States.

Elements of crimes

Break the statute into conduct/actus reus, mens rea, attendant circumstances, and results/causation where applicable. The statutory text is the starting point.

Voluntary act

Criminal liability ordinarily requires conduct that includes a voluntary act. Physical coercion, reflexes, certain unconscious acts, etc. may fail this requirement. Case: Martin v. State, where police physically took the intoxicated defendant into public, so his appearance there was not voluntary.

MPC mens rea

Purposely → knowingly → recklessly → negligently, descending roughly from more culpable to less culpable mental states. Pay attention to which mental state attaches to which element.

Proof beyond reasonable doubt

The prosecution must prove the elements of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. A legislature may characterize some mitigating matters as affirmative defenses and place a burden on the defendant, subject to constitutional limits. Cases: In re Winship; Mullaney; Patterson v. New York.

Murder vs. manslaughter / provocation

Common law distinguished cold-blooded murder from intentional killing under adequate provocation or heat of passion. The MPC uses the broader concept of extreme mental or emotional disturbance with a reasonable explanation or excuse.

Criminal causation

Usually ask both but-for/factual causation and proximate/legal causation. An intervening event breaks the chain only when sufficiently independent or unforeseeable under the applicable rule. Case: Commonwealth v. Carlson.

Victim refuses treatment

A competent victim's foreseeable refusal or withdrawal of invasive life-sustaining treatment does not automatically break causation. The defendant takes the victim as found; preexisting vulnerability does not excuse causation. Case: Carlson.