Torts Deck

Question 1

Battery Elements

Answer 1

• Harmful or Offensive Contact
• Contact must be with Plaintiff’s person

Question 2

Assault Elements

Answer 2

• Act by the D creating a reasonable apprehension in the plaintiff
• Of an immediate battery (harmful or offensive contact to the plaintiff’s person)

Question 3

False Imprisonment Elements

Answer 3

• An act or omission on the part of the D that confines or restrains the plaintiff
• The plaintiff must be confined to a bounded area

Question 4

Sufficient Acts of Restraint

Answer 4

• Physical barriers
• Physical force directed against the plaintiff, immediate family, or personal property
• Direct threats of forces
• Implied threats of force
• Failure to release a plaintiff when under a legal duty to do so (A taxi driver not letting a customer out)
• Invalid use of legal authority

Question 5

IIED Elements

Answer 5

• An act by the defendant amounting to extreme and outrageous conduct
• the plaintiff must suffer severe emotional distress

Question 6

Three Things Needed for All Intentional Torts

Answer 6

• A voluntary act
• Intent to cause the harm
• Causation

Question 7

Trespass to Land Elements

Answer 7

• Physical Invasion (person or object)
• of the Plaintiff’s real property (surface, subterranean, airspace)
• Damages not required
• Intent just needs to be walking on the land

Question 8

Trespass to Chattels Elements

Answer 8

• Act by the defendant that interferes with the plaintiff’s right of possession in a chattel
• Interference can be damaging or a dispossession

Question 9

Conversion Elements

Answer 9

• Act by the D that interferes with the plaintiff’s right of possession in a chattel
• Interference is serious enough in nature or consequences to warrant

Question 10

Defenses to Intentional Torts

Answer 10

• Consent
• Protective Privileges (Self-defense, defense of others, defense of property, reentry onto land, recapture of chattels)
• Necessity

Question 11

Duty of Care

Answer 11

• Owed only to foreseeable plaintiffs
• Duty to behave as a reasonably prudent person in one’s actions

Question 12

Trespasser Landowner Duty

Answer 12

• Unknown trespassers no duty
• Known trespassers the landowner must warn or make safe any conditions that are artificial, highly dangerous, concealed, that the landowner knows about

Question 13

Licensee Landowner Duty

Answer 13

• Licensee is a social guest
• Landowner has duty warn of or make safe hazardous conditions that are concealed, and known to the land possessor in advance
• Protect licensees from all traps

Question 14

Invitee Landowner Duty

Answer 14

• Business Guest
• Landowner has duty warn of or make safe hazardous conditions that are concealed, and known to the land possessor in advance or could have been discovered with a reasonable inspection
• Protect from all reasonably knowable traps

Question 15

Attractive Nuisance Doctrine

Answer 15

• Most courts impose a duty on the landowner to exercise ordinary care to avoid a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm to children caused by dangerous artificial conditions on their property (ex. fence around a pool)

Question 16

Negligence Per Se

Answer 16

• Plaintiff is within the protected class
• The statute was designed to prevent the type of harm suffered by the plaintiff
• If statute is violated creates presumption that breach and duty are good

Question 17

Strict Products Liability

Answer 17

• The defendant is a merchant
• The product is defective
• The product was not substantially altered since leaving the defendant’s control
• The plaintiff was making a foreseeable use of the product at the time of the injury
• Only applies to merchants

Question 18

Types of Defects

Answer 18

• Manufacturing Defects (one of the products messed up)
• Design Defects (whole line has a bad wheel)
• Information Defects

Question 19

Manufacturing Defect

Answer 19

• The D will be liable if the plaintiff can show that the product failed to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect

Question 20

Design Defect

Answer 20

• When all products of a line are the same but have dangerous propensities
• Plaintiff must show that the defendant could have made the product safer, without serious impact on the product’s utility or price (the “feasible alternative” approach)

Question 21

Information Defect

Answer 21

• A product may be defective as a result of the manufacturer’s failure to give adequate instructions or warnings to the risks with the product
• Adequacy is prominent, provide info about mitigating risk, comprehensible

Question 22

Implied Warranty of Merchantability

Answer 22

• Warranties implied in every sale of goods that can serve as the basis for a suit by a buyer against a seller: merchantability references that acceptable quality and are generally fit for the ordinary purpose for which the goods are used.

Question 23

Implied Warranty of Fitness for a Particular Purpose

Answer 23

• Arises when the seller knows or has reason to know the particular purpose for which the goods are required and that the buyer is relying on the seller’s skill and judgment in selecting the goods

Question 24

Private Nuisance

Answer 24

• A substantial, unreasonable interference with another private individual’s use or enjoyment of property that the other individual actually possesses or has a right of immediate possession

Question 25

Public Nuisance

Answer 25

• An act that unreasonably interferes with the health, safety, or property rights of the community

Question 26

Defamation Elements

Answer 26

• A defamatory statement that specifically identifies the plaintiff
• published to a third party
• falsity of the defamatory language
• fault on the part of the defendant
• damage to the plaintiff’s reputation

Question 27

Slander Per Se Statements

Answer 27

• Adversely reflect on the plaintiff’s business or profession
• State that the plaintiff has committed a serious crime
• Impute that the plaintiff has engaged in serious sexual misconduct
• State that the plaintiff has a loathsome disease