Introduction to Intentional Torts

Today we're going to be talking about intentional torts. You can expect to see about four to five scored questions about intentional torts on the MBE.

7 Commonly Tested Intentional Torts

We're going to review seven commonly tested intentional torts.

Harm to the person

Four of those intentional torts cause harm to the person. Those include battery, assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Harm to property interests

Three of those intentional torts cause harm to property interests. Those include trespass to land, trespass to chattels, and conversion.

“Prima facie”

Before doing that, I want to introduce a legal term that most of you probably already know. Whenever we discuss the element of an intentional tort, the legal term to describe it is that it's a prima facie element of a claim. That just means on its face. We're going to use this term to describe a plaintiff's presentation of sufficient evidence on all elements of the claim. The plaintiff must provide sufficient evidence that they have met all of the elements of the claim to avoid dismissal or an unfavorable verdict. After the plaintiff has presented that evidence the burden shifts over to the defendant so that they can provide their defense.

Elements of Intentional Torts

Let's start with the prima facie elements of intentional torts. Each intentional tort has its own specific elements, but in general, for an intentional tort, the plaintiff must prove three things. First, the defendant acted; second, with intent; and third, that caused harm to the plaintiff or its property.

Element 1: Defendant Acted

The first element, that the defendant acted, means that the act must be volitional, meaning voluntary. That means things like a muscle spasm or stumbling or other non-voluntary movements will not satisfy this requirement.

Element 3: Causation

The third element, causation, deals with showing that there's a relationship between the act and the harm to the plaintiff. This means that the act or conduct of the defendant must be a substantial factor in bringing about the injury or the harm to the plaintiff's interests.

Element 2: Intent

Now, the second element, that the defendant acted with intent, is a little more complicated. There are a few things that you need to know about exactly what we mean when we say that the defendant acted with intent.

Actual Intent

First, there are two kinds of intent. That is, intent can either be actual or intent can be implied. Actual intent means that the defendant acted with the purpose or desire to harm the plaintiff's person or their interests.

Example

To make this a little clearer, let's use an example. Imagine that we have two people, Derek and Patrick, and Derek sees Patrick all the way across a football field. Derek would love to hit Patrick with a rock, but the chances that he'd be able to throw a rock that far and actually hit Patrick are extremely low. But Derek decides to go forward anyway, picks up a rock, and throws it across the field. Miraculously, the rock actually hits Patrick's head and causes injury. If Patrick were then to sue Derek and bring a tort claim against him, in this case, would there be intent for battery? The answer is yes.

Although it may have been unlikely that Derek was able to hit Patrick from that far away, Derek's purpose was to make the desired contact between the rock and Patrick's head. What this example illustrates is that when you're acting with a purpose or desire to bring about specific consequences, even if it's unlikely that you'll be successful, that can still satisfy the required intent. That was actual intent.

Implied Intent

Now let's talk about the second kind of intent, which is implied intent.

Implied intent means that the defendant acted knowingly with substantial certainty that the consequences will occur. In this instance, the defendant isn't trying necessarily to hurt the plaintiff or the plaintiff's property. However, they know if they take their particular course of action that there's substantial certainty that those consequences will occur.

Actual Intent v Implied Intent

In other words, the difference between actual intent and implied intent is that with actual intent the goal that the defendant had was to cause a specific consequence. With implied intent, it wasn't their goal, but they acted even though they knew with substantial certainty that those consequences would occur.

Example

To illustrate, let's have another example. In this case, instead of being on a football field Derek and Patrick are in a library. Patrick is sitting in a chair at the library at a table and then stands up for a second. After Patrick stands up Derek pulls the chair back that Patrick had been sitting on, so that when Patrick sits back down he ends up making contact with the floor and injuring himself. Now, in this case, even though the goal might not have been to cause the injury, since Derek acted knowing with substantial certainty that it would occur, he can still be said to have intent to have caused that injury.

Transferred Intent Doctrine

Now, in addition to there being two kinds of intent, there's three other features of intent that are important to know. The first is the transferred intent doctrine. Under the transferred intent doctrine, if the defendant intends to commit an intentional tort against a person, that defendant is liable even though a different tort results or a different person is impacted. What does this mean? Imagine that Derek is throwing his rock at Patrick and he's hoping that he's going to be able to hit Patrick with this rock, but instead, he accidentally hits Tom with the rock.

Now, if Tom were to bring a lawsuit, it would not be reasonable for Derek simply to say, " I wanted to hit someone with a rock, and I was intending to cause injury, but I didn't mean it to be you." What's important instead is that Derek intended injury and an injury occurred. The fact that it was a different person than Derek intended to injure ends up not being relevant. In other words, the intent that Derek had to harm Patrick can be transferred to Tom.

Sensitivity and Incapacity

Next. In addition to these nuances about the nature of intent, there's two other things that come up in intentional torts that are important to know as a general matter. That is, the importance of sensitivity and capacity.

Sensitivity

First, sensitivity. If the plaintiff has extreme sensitivity, this is typically not taken into account when evaluating whether or not the plaintiff has a valid claim. Instead, the court will always ask if an ordinary or typical person would have been injured or offended when evaluating the elements of a tort.

If the answer is no, then we'll just simply say that the plaintiff is not an ordinary or typical plaintiff, so even though they felt harmed that doesn't mean that the defendant is liable. This principle is often called hypersensitivity, and hypersensitive plaintiffs do not have valid claims if an ordinary plaintiff would have not been injured in the same way.

No incapacity defenses

The second point about intentional torts generally that's important to note is that there's no incapacity defenses. In other areas of the law, when certain people lack legal capacity, for instance, people that are drunk, children, or people with mental illness, they will not be liable for their actions. However, within intentional torts, the fact that someone may be incapacitated is not a defense. For instance, a child can still be liable for battery if they throw a rock or pull out a chair in the same way that adults can be. As a result, any answer on the MBE about intentional torts saying that the defendant isn't liable because he or she lacks legal capacity is wrong. Again, in intentional torts there are no incapacity defenses.

Learn the Elements

Now, those are some basic elements of intentional torts. However, we're now going to go through seven specific intentional torts. Each of those seven intentional torts are going to have their own elements. For these intentional torts, the plaintiff must meet each of those specific elements for the defendant to be liable. The result is when studying intentional torts, memorization is key.

We can, of course, familiarize ourselves with the elements by taking a look at case law or the law itself as summarized by the Restatement of Torts, but you are preparing for the MBE, not preparing a research paper. To simplify it for you, the next segments we'll review are going to focus on the main elements of each intentional tort from a practical standpoint.