Every Bundle includes the complete text from each of the titles below:
PLUS: Hundreds of law school topic-related videos from
The Understanding Law Video Lecture Series™:
Choose Your Subscription:
--OR--
Register and Subscribe Now
Every Bundle includes the complete text from each of the titles below:
PLUS: Hundreds of law school topic-related videos from
The Understanding Law Video Lecture Series™:
Choose Your Subscription:
--OR--
Example 2: D uses non-deadly force against one who he thinks is an intruder on D’s property, but who is really the mail carrier. Again, that’s battery.
+ Medical malpractice or sports: In a medical malpractice or sports context, consider the possibility that there may be battery.
Example 1: D is a doctor who fails to get the patient’s informed consent before performing a certain procedure; D may be found to have battered the patient.
Example 2: P and D play a contact sport (so P impliedly consents to contacts that are within the usual practices or rules of the sport). D hits or tackles P on purpose, and outside of the rules; D probably has committed battery, by going beyond the scope of what P impliedly consented to.
Assault
* Assault generally: Look for an assault issue whenever you have a person who is put in “apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact” by another person.
+ Definition to use: If you have an assault issue, work the following definition into the beginning of your discussion of the issue: “Assault is the intentional causing of an apprehension of harmful or offensive contact.”
+ Combined with battery: Anytime you have identified a battery, also consider whether there was first an assault – there usually was. As long as P saw was about to happen there’s an assault just before the battery.
Example: If D swings at P’s jaw, there’s an assault just before the impact, as long as P saw D’s swing.
+ Intent: Intent issues are sometimes tested in assault:
o Two possible intents: Remember that there are two distinct intents, either of which can suffice:
D intends to commit a battery, but fails; or
D intends to put P in apprehension, but not to really cause the contact (so that the intent is “attempt to frighten”).
o Transferred intent: “Transferred intent” operates in assault cases. Thus if D tries to frighten X (or to make a contact with X), and P thinks that he himself will be hit, then D has assaulted P even if D never intended any effect on P or even saw P.
+ Words-alone rule: Remember the “words alone” rule – words alone can’t constitute an assault. But typically, the facts will show at least some small overt act, which will be enough.