Tort Law - Lecture 2

Three Trespass Torts

• Battery: Protects bodily integrity.

• Assault: Protects peace of mind.

• False Imprisonment: Protects freedom of movement.

Battery

• Protects bodily integrity through preventing unwanted physical contact.

• Physical contact infringes on bodily integrity.

Assault

• Protects peace of mind by preventing threats of battery.

• Threat to commit battery against another person.

• Tort law distinguishes assault from battery, unlike everyday language or criminal law.

False Imprisonment

• Protects freedom of movement by preventing unlawful confinement.

Elements of Torts

• Focus: Elements of battery, assault, and false imprisonment.

• Elements are essential to determining sub-issues in cases.

• Example: Case of Osman and May, issue of false imprisonment required understanding of elements to define sub-issues.

Defenses and Remedies

• Defenses: Situations where a defendant avoids liability even if the plaintiff establishes all tort elements due to a legal excuse.

• Remedies: Typically damages in cases of trespass to the person.

• Elements are this week's focus.

Burden of Proof

• Plaintiff proves the defendant engaged in a direct act causing physical contact

• Defendant proves absence of fault.

• The court determines who has to prove which part.

• Plaintiff proves everything, unless the court has mandated otherwise.

Considerations:

• Punch in the face: Physical contact.

• Swinging and missing: No physical contact, can't be a battery.

• Hitting with a cricket bat or using garden shears: Use of implements still constitutes physical contact.

• Touching without causing harm: Still an invasion of bodily integrity.

Rixon Case

• No threshold for what constitutes contact.

• Paragraph 53: "Any touching of another person, however slight, may amount to a battery."

• No actual injury or harm needed for contact to constitute a battery.

• Exception: Touching someone in a way consistent with generally accepted day-to-day conduct does not count as physical contact for the purposes of battery.

Examples of Direct Act

• Cooper and Newbitt: Shooting someone with a gun is a direct act.

• Michalen Watson: Throwing a piece of metal at a tree that ricochets and hits someone is a direct act.

• Scott and Shepard: Throwing a lit firecracker into a crowd is a direct act.

• Firecracker Example- It changes how voluntary the actions of the intervening actors are.

• Throwing an unlit firecracker vs throwing a lit firecracker can affect consequence.

Categories of Fault

• Intention: Deliberately causing contact.

• Recklessness: Knowing actions may lead to contact, but acting anyway (Karcher).

• Negligence/Carelessness: A reasonable person would have taken precautions to avoid contact.

Examples

• Intention: Aiming a slingshot at someone.

• Recklessness: Shooting rocks over a fence, knowing a neighbor is on the other side but not aiming directly at them.

• Carelessness: Shooting at soda cans on a fence without considering a neighbor might be in the backyard.

• In this subject, we don't have to worry about negligent and careless battery.- It's pursued through the tort of negligence.

Subjective vs. Objective Standards

• Subjective: Concerned with what was actually going through a person's mind.

• Objective: Concerned with what ought to have been going through the person's mind (determined by reference to a hypothetical person).

• Reasonable person example

• Objective uses multiple standards.

Applying Standards of Fault

• Intention: Subjective.

• Negligence/Carelessness: Objective.

• Recklessness: Somewhere in the middle.

• Requires their actual knowledge that what they're doing might cause physical contact with another person.

Burden of Proof (again)

• Burden is on the plaintiff to prove the elements of a tort, right? However, here, it is reversed.

• Stingle and Clark- In an action for trespass to the person by blow or missile, which is essentially battery, it is for the defendant to prove the absence of intent and negligence on the defendant's part."

Fault in Relation to Contact

• It's only in relation to the contact. It is not about whether the person intended or was reckless as to whether the plaintiff would be harmed or injured.

• Hostility is not required (Rickson).

Examples of How Fault Plays Out

• Loss of bodily control: Public Transport Commissions in Perry- Woman had a seizure and fell onto the train tracks, so she sued them because they shouldn't be to blame.

• Couldn't have delierably being trying to be on the train tracks.

• Clear case of loss of bodily control where the person is not at fault.

• Another one: Mchale and Watson- Boy throwing a tree that then bounces off and hits someone.

• No fault, it was a freak accident.

Elements of assault

Checudi case

• There is a threat by the defendant by words of conduct to inflict harmful or offensive contact upon the plaintiff forthwith.

• Subjective intention on the part of the defendant that the threat will create in the mind of the plaintiff an apprehension that the threat will be carried out forthwith.

• The threat must in fact create in the mind of the plaintiff an apprehension that the threat will be carried out forthwith.

• The apprehension that the plaintiff does have must be objectively reasonable.

Threat Constitutes

• Someone throwing a punch and missing.

• Someone yelling "eat my fist"

• Contact in phone calls, emails, and social media.

• Barton Case: Did phone calls affect the element of threat?

• Statement: "Better watch out, in 10 years I'm going to come get you," will not constitute as an assault.

Imminent Contact

• "Get ready to eat my fist…": How far apart can that actually be, and still be imminent contact?

• Balvin and Thurston Case:- "I'm going to get you big time, I want me money…". "Your house will be ashes while you're asleep…".

• Justice Latham says, "It is the threat that must demonstrate the imminence of the physical harm."

• "messages has no temporal immediacy."

• Barton and Armstrong case: Similar to above case, involving death threats over the phone.

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