Comprehensive Tort Law Capsule Summary Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards based on Kionka's Black Letter Outline on Torts (5th Edition), covering intentional torts, negligence, strict liability, products liability, privileges, immunities, damages, and privacy.

Intent (Tort Law)

Conduct wherein the actor either desires to cause the consequences of his act, or believes that the consequences are substantially certain to result from it.

Transferred Intent

The doctrine under which a defendant's intent to commit any one of five original trespass-based torts (assault, battery, false imprisonment, trespass to land, or trespass to chattels) automatically supplies the intent for any of the other four, or transfers from an intended victim to an actual, unintended victim.

Battery

A harmful or offensive contact (direct or indirect) with the plaintiff's person, caused by the defendant with the required intent to cause such contact or an apprehension thereof.

Assault

An intentional act by the defendant that arouses in the plaintiff a reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery.

False Imprisonment

The intentional, complete confinement of the plaintiff within boundaries fixed by the defendant, where the plaintiff is conscious of the confinement or harmed by it, and has no known reasonable or safe exit.

False Arrest

Confinement of a person accomplished under color of legal authority when the actor purports to have lawful authority to take custody, exercises it, and the person submits against their will.

Intentional or Reckless Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED)

The tort committed when a defendant, by extreme and outrageous conduct going beyond all possible bounds of decency, intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress to the plaintiff.

Trespass to Land

An intentional physical invasion of real property where the defendant enters, causes an object or person to enter, remains after privilege expires, or fails to remove a thing under a legal duty to remove.

Trespass to Chattels

An intentional interference with the plaintiff's chattel, either through physical contact that impairs its condition, quality, or value, or through dispossession of the chattel.

Conversion

An intentional exercise of dominion or control over personal property which so seriously interferes with the owner's right of control that the actor may justly be required to pay its full value.

Informed Consent

The doctrine requiring a medical professional to disclose material risks and alternatives of a proposed treatment so the patient can make an intelligent choice; failure to disclose mere risks is actionable as negligence rather than battery.

Public Necessity

A complete defense to intentional property torts where an actor intentionally damages private property to avert an imminent disaster threatening an entire community or involving the public interest.

Private Necessity

A qualified privilege permitting an actor to enter or damage another's property to prevent imminent serious harm to the actor or their property, while remaining liable for actual physical damages caused.

Elements of Negligence

The four prima facie components required to sustain a claim: (1) a legal duty of care, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) a causal connection between the breach and the injury, and (4) actual provable harm.

Reasonably Prudent Person Standard

An objective legal test that measures conduct against that of a hypothetical person of ordinary prudence in the same or similar circumstances, ignoring mental deficiencies but accounting for physical disabilities.

Hand Formula (Risk-Utility Test)

The classic algebraic negligence formula determining that a risk is unreasonable when the foreseeable probability and gravity of harm outweigh the burden of taking adequate precautions to prevent it.

Negligence Per Se

The doctrine holding that an unexcused violation of a safety statute conclusively establishes the breach element of negligence if the statute was intended to protect that class of persons from that specific hazard.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

A circumstantial evidence doctrine ('the thing speaks for itself') permitting a jury to infer negligence when an injury-causing instrumentality was in the defendant's exclusive control and the harm would not ordinarily occur without negligence.

Reckless Conduct ('Willful and Wanton Misconduct')

Conduct wherein the actor knows or has reason to know that their action creates an unreasonably high risk of harm and exhibits a conscious indifference to the safety of others.

Nonfeasance

Passive inaction or failure to protect another person from harm, which incurs no tort liability absent a special relationship or the defendant having created the peril.

Tarasoff Rule

The affirmative duty requiring a mental health professional to use reasonable care to warn or protect an identifiable third party when a patient makes an imminent, serious threat against that person.

Pure Comparative Negligence

A comparative fault regime allowing a negligent plaintiff to recover damages regardless of how high their percentage of fault is relative to that of the defendant.

Modified Comparative Negligence

A comparative fault regime barring a plaintiff from any recovery if their causative fault reaches or exceeds a statutory threshold (typically either as great as $50\%$ or greater than $50\%$ / at $51\%$).

Last Clear Chance

A historical common law doctrine permitting an otherwise contributorily negligent plaintiff to recover if the defendant had the final opportunity to prevent the accident and negligently failed to do so.

Express Assumption of Risk

An explicit agreement (typically via a written contract or release) by which the plaintiff relieves the defendant of the legal duty of care regarding a specified risk before injury occurs.

Implied Assumption of Risk

The defense arising when a plaintiff subjectively knows and appreciates a risk created by the defendant's negligence, yet voluntarily proceeds to encounter that danger.

Statute of Repose

A special limitation period establishing an absolute outer temporal limit beyond which a defendant cannot be sued for a completed activity, irrespective of when injury occurred or was discovered.

Discovery Rule

A procedural rule tolling the statute of limitations until the plaintiff discovers, or through reasonable care should have discovered, the existence of the injury and its tortious cause.

Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)

The federal enactment waiving the United States' sovereign immunity for negligent or wrongful acts of government employees acting within their employment, subject to exceptions like discretionary functions.

Cause in Fact ('Sine Qua Non')

The factual causation requirement establishing that the plaintiff's harm would not have occurred 'but for' the defendant's tortious conduct.

Adult Activity Exception

A legal doctrine allowing minors to be held liable for negligence if they engage in activities considered adult-like or inherently risky, recognizing their ability to understand the risks involved.