Act that causes apprehension or fear of imminent battery. Victim must know of act.
Restatement (Second) § 21. Assault.
(1) An actor is subject to liability to another for assault if
(a) he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and
(b) the other is thereby put in such imminent apprehension.
Battery
Defendant acts (conduct) with the purpose (intent) of causing a harmful or offensive (under the circumstances—Vosburg v. Putney (WI 1891)) contact with another or an imminent apprehension thereof or with knowledge to a substantial certainty that defendant’s conduct will cause such a contact or apprehension (Garratt v. Dailey (WA 1956)); and defendant’s conduct results in (causes) such a contact (injury) with the other and/or a third party (Talmage v. Smith (MI 1894)).
Trespass
Unauthorized interference with another’s exclusive right to real property.
You don’t need to know the property is someone else’s.
Conversion
Like trespass but with personal property.
False Imprisonment
The act must be intended, even if innocently.
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Knowledge with substantial certainty or intent to cause substantial emotional distress. Includes cruel jokes, highly abusive bill-collecting efforts, and outrageous sexual or racial harassment.
Plaintiff’s prima facie case for intentional torts
Defendant breached duty to plaintiff by violating a specific freedom
Battery: Freedom from certain bodily contacts.
Assault: Freedom from certain apprehensions of intentional physical contact by another.
Trespass: Freedom from interference with exclusive possession of realty.
Conversion: Freedom from interference with exclusive possession of personalty.
Injury to plaintiff (including dignitary)
Causation
Damages
Thin skull rule. Vosburg v. Putney.
You take your victim as you find her; liability for all resulting damages. (Same rule applies for unintentional torts.)
Social Purposes and Principles Served by Awarding Damages
Compensation. Government could do it for 5% of the cost; private insurance could do it for 20% of the cost.
Normative incentives and disincentives. At the cost of limiting liberty.
Corrective justice. Undoing violations of rights in order to annul loss.
Moral quality of act usually irrelevant to calculus of compensatory damages.