TORTS

Question 1

Intentional Tort

Answer 1

Under common law, an intentional tort is a civil wrong resulting from an intentional act by the wrongdoer.

Question 2

Battery

Answer 2

Under common law, battery occurs when the defendant’s voluntary acts cause harmful or offensive contact with the plaintiff’s person or extended personality.

Question 3

Assault

Answer 3

Under common law, assault occurs when the defendant’s voluntary acts cause the plaintiff reasonable apprehension of immediate harmful or offensive conduct.

Question 4

False Imprisonment

Answer 4

Under common law, false imprisonment occurs when the defendant acts to intentionally cause confinement or restrain of the plaintiff within a bounded area.

Question 5

Intentional infliction of Emotional Distress

Answer 5

Under common law, intentional infliction of emotional distress occurs when the defendant, by extreme and outrageous conduct, intentionally or recklessly causes the plaintiff severe mental distress.

Question 6

Trespass to Chattels

Answer 6

Under common law, trespass to chattels is an interference with the plaintiff’s right of possession of personal property.

Question 7

Conversionip

Answer 7

Under common law, conversion is the unprivileged interference with the plaintiff’s right of possession to such a degree that the defendant must pay the plaintiff for the full value of the chattel. The interference can be achieved by either taking control of the chattel for a significant period of time or significantly destroying it.

Question 8

Trespass to Land

Answer 8

Under common law, trespass to land is the defendant’s purposeful physical invasion of the plaintiff’s real property.

Question 9

Consent

Answer 9

Under common law, consent is the plaintiff’s express or implied willingness to subject himself to the defendant’s conduct. If the plaintiff consent, what would otherwise be tortious is instead privileged.

Question 10

Self-Defense

Answer 10

Under common law, a person may use force that is reasonably necessary to protect against injury when he reasonably believes he is facing an immediate threat of force.

Question 11

Defense of Others

Answer 11

Under common law, a person may use force that is reasonably necessary to protect a third party against injury when he reasonably believes the third party could have used the same force to protect himself.

Question 12

Defense of Property and Chattels

Answer 12

Under common law, a person may use force that is reasonably necessary to protect property against the commission of a tort.

Question 13

Necessity

Answer 13

Under common law, a person is justified in interfering with real or personal property of another when it is reasonably and apparently necessary to avoid threatened imminent injury and the potential for injury far outweighs the harmful intrusion of another’s property interest.

Question 14

Negligence

Answer 14

Under common law, negligence is the failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under the same set of facts. To establish a prime facie case of negligence, the following elements must be present: (1) duty, (2) breach of duty, (3) actual and proximate cause, and (4) damages.

Question 15

Trespasser

Answer 15

Under common law, a trespasser is a person who enters the landowner’s land without permission or privilege.

Question 16

Licensee

Answer 16

Under common law, a licensee is a person who enters the landowner’s land for his own purpose or business, whit the landowner’s permission, including social gests.

Question 17

Invitee

Answer 17

Under common law, an invitee is a person who enters the landowner’s land because he was expressly or impliedly invited by the landowner.

Question 18

Negligence Per Se

Answer 18

Under common law, negligence per se is a legal doctrine that provides that in certain circumstances a safety statute or regulation may be used to set the standard of care in a negligence case. To establish a breach of that standard under negligence per se, the following elements must be present: (1) The defendant violated the statute or regulation, (2) the violation caused the type of harm that the statute or regulation is designated to protect, and (3) the plaintiff belongs to the protected class the statute or regulation is designed to protec.

Question 19

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Answer 19

Under common law, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur holds that, in some circumstances, the mere fact of an accident’s occurrence raises an inference of unreasonable conduct so as to establish a breach of the duty to the plaintiff.

Question 20

Contributory Negligence

Answer 20

Under common law, a defendant in a contributory negligence jurisdiction may not be liable for negligence if the plaintiff was injured, in part, because of his own negligence.

Question 21

Comparative Negligence

Answer 21

Under common law, comparative negligence allows a plaintiff, who would have been completely barred from recovery under contributory negligence, to recover a percentage of his claimed damages.

Question 22

Assumption of Risk

Answer 22

Under common law, the plaintiff may be barred from recovery if the defendant can demonstrate that the plaintiff voluntarily and knowingly assumed the risk of any damage caused by the defendant’s acts. A plaintiff will not recover for a negligence claim if he assumed the risk of any damage created by the defendant’s actions.

Question 23

Ultrahazardous Activities

Answer 23

Under common law, an ultrahazardous activities is an activity that involves a substantial risk of serious harm to persons or property regardless or whether reasonable care is exercised.

Question 24

Common Law Defamation

Answer 24

Under common law, a communication is defamatory if it tends so to harm the reputation of another as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.

Question 25

Libel

Answer 25

Under common law, libel is defamation that has been embodied in writing or other permanent form.

Question 26

Slander

Answer 26

Under common law, slander consist of verbal statements so damaging to the plaintiff’s reputation that they are treated as defamatory.

Question 27

Invasion of Right to Privacy

Answer 27

Under common law, invasion of the right to privacy is the intrusion into the personal life of another, without just case.

Question 28

Intentional Misrepresentation

Answer 28

Under common law, intentional misrepresentation occurs when a defendant intentionally misrepresents a material fact in order to cause a fraudulent reliance.

Question 29

Negligent Misrepresentation

Answer 29

Under common law, negligent misrepresentation occurs when a defendant, in a professional capacity, makes a misrepresentation that causes the plaintiff to rely upon advice or a service that results in pecuniary loss.

Question 30

Malicious Criminal Prosecution

Answer 30

Under common law, malicious criminal prosecution occurs when one party files an untrue or baseless criminal complaint against another.

Question 31

Abuse of Process

Answer 31

Under common law, abuse of process occurs when on a party files an untrue or baseless civil complaint against another.

Question 32

Tortious Interference with Business Relations

Answer 32

Under common law, tortious interference with business relationships occurs when a person intentionally and improperly damages the plaintiff’s contractual relationships or other business relationships.

Question 33

Nuisance

Answer 33

Under common law, a nuisance is the unreasonable invasion of private or public property rights by tortious conduct that substantially impairs another’s enjoyment of such property. Tort claims for nuisance are based on an invasion of property rights or public rights.

Question 34

Private Nuisance

Answer 34

Under common law, a private nuisance is any act that substantially and unreasonably interferes with another person’s private use or enjoyment of property.

Question 35

Public Nuisance

Answer 35

Under common law, a public nuisance is any act that unreasonably interferes with the health, safety, or property rights of the community.

Question 36

Vicarious Liability

Answer 36

Under common law, vicarious liability is liability that a supervisory party bears for the actionable conduct of a subordinate associate because of the existence of a special relationship between the two parties

Question 37

Join and Several Liability

Answer 37

Under common law, multiple defendants may be joint and severally liable of two or more tortious acts combine to proximate cause an indivisible injury to plaintiff.

Question 38

Wrongful Death Claims

Answer 38

Under common law, a plaintiff may bring a wrongful death action against a defendant who is liable for death.