Torts Flashcards
Negligence
To recover from a party for negligence, plaintiff must prove (1) Duty (she was foreseeable and they owed her a duty of care. The standard duty of care is to act as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances, but that duty can be supplemented in special situations); (2) Breach of duty (they did not live up to their duty of care); (3) Causation (both actual and proximate); and (4) Damage.
Eggshell Skull Doctrine
Under this doctrine, a defendant takes their plaintiff “as he finds her.” In other words, even if the extent of the damage is unforeseeable because of a Plaintiff’s unique condition, the Defendant will still be liable for the full extent of the damage.
Duty to Rescue
In general, there is no duty to rescue. However, in certain situations, a duty to rescue may be created (i.e. special relationship (employee/employer or parents/children), creation of the peril, etc.).
Doctor-Patient Confidentiality
Psychologists have a duty of patient-doctor confidentiality. However, they have a duty to disclose if they reasonably fear the patient is an imminent threat to a third party.
False Imprisonment
An actor is subject to liability to another for false imprisonment if “(a) he acts intending to confine the other or a third person within boundaries fixed by the actor, and (b) his act directly or indirectly results in such a confinement of the other, and (c) the other is conscious of the confinement or is harmed by it.” RESTATEMENT (SECOND)OFTORTS §35.
Confinement need not be physical, and it “need not be stationary.” Id. §36 cmt. b. The individual confined is not required to endanger his person through escape efforts. Id. § 36 cmt. a. See also id. § 38 (“confinement may be by actual or apparent physical barriers”). The requisite intent to confine can be shown through either motivation or knowledge. An actor may be found liable for false imprisonment both when “his act was done for the purpose of imposing confinement upon the other” and when he acted “with knowledge that such confinement would, to a substantial certainty, result from [his actions].” Id. § 35 cmt. d. Employee’s actions would have been privileged if stopping the Ferris wheel had been necessary in order to protect “some interest of the actor or of the public which is of such importance as to justify the harm caused or threatened by its exercise.”
Negligence
In any negligence action, a plaintiff must show that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty to conform his conduct to a standard necessary to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm to others, that the defendant’s conduct fell below the applicable standard of care, and that the defendant’s conduct was both the cause in fact and the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries.
NIED
Although early cases typically denied recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress to a plaintiff who experienced no physical contact or injury (see Mitchell v. Rochester Railway Co., 45 N.E. 354 (N.Y. 1896)), today virtually all American jurisdictions have abandoned this approach; a plaintiff who is within the zone of danger created by the defendant and who suffers a physical manifestation of emotional distress occasioned by a threatened injury may recover in virtually all states.
