Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Torts - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Intentional Act that interferes with chattel, causing harm.
    - - AN intentional act that is a physical invasion of property.
    - - Intentional act that causes destruction or serious interference of chattel.
  - - - When the plaintiff experiences a reasonable apprehension of an immediate harmful of offensive contact.
        
        Only apparent ability required.
        
        Can recover nominal damages. Actual Damages not required.
        
        Reasonable apprehension. Fear not required.
    - - Harmful or offensive contact
        
        Anything connect to the person is an extension of said person.
        
        Direct touching is not required
        
        Reasonable Person Standard
        
        Lack of Consent
    - - Causing one to be confined to a bounded area against plaintiffs will.
        
        Any time is sufficient
        
        No duty to resist. Only knowledge ion confinement
        
        No confinement is there is a reasonable means off escape and plaintiff is aware of escape.
        
        Defense: Shopkeepers Privilege.
        Requires a reasonable manner/time/belief of theft.
    - - Intentional or reckless act amounting to extreme conduct that causes mental distress.
  - - - Voluntary Act
      - Intent
      - Elements of a Claim
      - Causation
      - Harm
      - Lack of Privilege
    - - Desire that an act will cause a harmful result.
      - Knows with substantial certainty that the result will follow.
      - Transferred Intent: Limited to Certain Torts
        
        Assault
        
        Battery
        
        False Imprisonment
        
        Trespass to Land
        
        Trespass to Chattels
- - - - Materially False
        
        Misstatement of fact, not an opinion unless rendered by someone with superior skill
      - Justifiably reliance
        
        Intent to indice reliance
      - Intentional Assertion
      - Causes damages to plaintiff
  - - - A public nuisance is an unreasonable interference with public property or a right common to the general public.
        
        Considerations
        
        whether the conduct involves a significant interference with the public health, safety, peace, comfort, or convenience;
        
        whether the conduct is proscribed by a statute, ordinance, or regulation; and
        
        whether the conduct is of a continuing nature or has produced a permanent or long-lasting effect.
        
        An individual cannot recover personally for public nuisance unless the individual suffers a harm of a kind different from that suffered by other members of the public.
    - - Private nuisance is an activity or thing that substantially and unreasonably interferes with the plaintiff’s use and enjoyment of private land.
      - The interference must be unreasonable.
      - The interference must be substantial including offensive, inconvenient, or annoying to an average person in the community.
  - - - Harm to Reputation
      - Publication
      - Concerning the plaintiff
      - Defamatory Message
    - - Libel (Written)
      - Slander (not written)
    - - General Damages
        No proof of actual damages required
      - Pecuinary/ Special Damages
        Quantifiable monetary losses.
        Plaintiff must proove
      - Punitive Damages
        Needs an additional showing of malice.
    - - Privielege
      - Consent
      - Truth
      - Public Figure
        Malice required
  - - - Physical or non Phsyical intrusion.
      - Myst be highly objectionable to a reasonable person.
      - The plaintiff must have an expectation of privacy.
    - - Unauthorized use of the plaintiff’s identity or likeness for the defendant’s commercial advantage.
    - - Attributing to the plaintiff views he does not hold or actions he did not take.
      - Reasonable person would find offensive.
      - Must be communicated to a substantial number of people
    - - Needs to be highly offensive to a reasonable person and not of legitimate public concern.
        
        Must be publication to the public.
        
        Does not apply if publication is newsworthy.
    - - Must be highly objectionable
      - The plaintiff must have expectation of privacy.
      - Physical or non-physical
- - - - Changes—Product must reach the user without substantial change in the condition in which it was supplied.
        
        Warning defect—While adequate warnings insulate a defendant, inadequate warnings result in liability.
        .
      - Control—Defect must have existed at the time the product left that defendant’s control.
      - Business—Only commercial suppliers can be held liable. Casual sellers are not liable.
      - Causation—Both actual cause and proximate cause required.
      - Damages—Compensatory and punitive damages available. Most states deny recovery under strict liability when the sole claim is for economic loss
    - - Manufacturing defect—Product was dangerous beyond the expectation of the ordinary consumer because of a departure from its intended design.
        
        Food products treated same way—consumer expectations standard.
      - Design defect—Plaintiff must show a reasonable alternative design that is a less dangerous modification or alteration and was economically feasible
      - Seller must anticipate reasonably foreseeable misuses of the product.
      - No requirement of contractual privity.
      - Reasonable alternative design must exist at the time of the original design. Later improvements, so-called state of the art, do not constitute a reasonable alternative design.
- - - - breach occurs when the defendant’s conduct falls short of the standard of care
        
        Negligence Per Se
        
        When a statute provides for a criminal penalty, that statute’s specific duty replaces the common law duty.
        
        The plaintiff must prove that he was in the class intended to be protected by the statute, the harm suffered is the particular harm that the statute was designed to prevent, and the standards of conduct are clearly defined.
        
        Res Ipsa Loquitur
        
        It is a circumstantial evidence doctrine. The accident that caused the injury would not normally occur unless someone was negligent, and the negligence is attributable to the defendant.
    - - Actual Cause
        
        But-For
        
        Multiple Tort Feasors
        
        When two or more defendants have been negligent, but uncertainty exists about which one caused the injury, the burden of proof shifts to the plaintiff to prove that harm has been caused by one of them. The burden then shifts back to the defendants to show their negligence was not the actual cause.
      - Legal Cause (Proximate)
        
        Foreseeability
        
        The test is based on foreseeability and is actually a limitation on liability in that every actual cause case does not rise to legal cause. Defendants are liable for the normal incidents within the increased risk caused by their acts. As duty arises only to foreseeable plaintiffs who are within the zone of danger, proximate cause requires that the risk also be foreseeable
        
        Eggshell plaintiff
        
        An exception to the foreseeable risk doctrine is the eggshell plaintiff. Defendants take the full consequence for a plaintiff’s injuries, even if the injuries are more severe than they would have been with a normal person.
        
        Chain of Events
        
        Direct Cause
        
        If there is an uninterrupted chain of events between a defendant’s negligent act and the plaintiff’s injury, then it is a direct cause case
        
        Defendant is liable for all foreseeable harmful results.
        
        Indirect Cause
        
        An indirect cause case is one where a force came into motion after the defendant’s act and combined with the negligent act to cause the plaintiff’s injury.
        
        Intervening Forces
        
        The intervening force may break the chain of causation between the initial act and the ultimate injury.
        
        Foreseeable Intervening Act
        
        2 more items...
        
        Unforseeable Intervening Act
        
        2 more items...
    - - Defendant must meet a certain standard of conduct for the protection of others against unreasonable risk.
      - When action is taken, a duty of care is owed to all foreseeable plaintiffs.
      - No affirmative duty to act exists.
        Exceptions
        
        No duty to control others,
        
        Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
        
        Must be in Zone of Danger
        
        By-standard
        
        Located near the scene of the accident.
        
        Suffered severe emotional distress from the sensory and contemporaneous observation of scene.
        
        Had a close personal relationship with victim.
        
        One can assume a duty to act. Besides standard of care, also liable if leaves plaintiff in worse condition.
        
        Standard of Care
        
        A defendant’s conduct is measured against a reasonable, ordinary, prudent person. By utilizing a reasonable person, the standard is an objective one.
        
        Children
        
        A child’s conduct is held to the standard of care of a reasonable child of the same age, education, intelligence, and experience.
        
        Some jurisdictions divide by age: For ages 6 and below it is conclusively presumed that they are incapable of negligence; for ages 7 through 13 there is a rebuttable presumption of no negligence; and for ages 14 and up there is a rebuttable presumption of capability for negligence.
        
        Higher Standard of care
        
        A higher standard of care is imposed on professionals
        
        Higher standard for special relationship between the parties such as bailor/bailee, owners/occupiers of land, and landlord/tenant.
    - - Actual harm or injury.
        
        Plaintiff cannot recover nominal damages.
        
        Plaintiff is compensated for all past, present, and prospective damages including economic damages, such as medical expenses and lost earnings, and noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering.
        
        Punitive damages may be recoverable if defendant’s actions were wanton and willful, reckless, or malicious.
  - - - Comparative fault means that the plaintiff’s conduct contributed to her injury and is compared to defendant’s negligence.
      - Comparative fault does not apply to intentional torts.
      - Damages are reduced accordingly.
    - - Assumption of risk requires that the plaintiff must have known of the risk and still voluntarily proceeded with the action.
    - - Not Needed on Exam
        (See Comparative Fault)
    - - each defendant is liable for the entirety of plaintiff’s damages—
      - If the plaintiff recovers in full from one defendant, then there is satisfaction and the plaintiff cannot also recover from the second defendant.
      - The rule of contribution allows the tortfeasor that paid to seek recovery from the other defendant for the amount that was more than his share.