CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURESChapter 5

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Have frivolous lawsuits always been around?Do you think this was frivolous?This was mocking the McDonald’s suit from

1994, but did you know…

THINKING BACK…. How do crimes and torts differ?

Crime = Offense against society Tort = Offense against an individual

Injured person can sue What can they get???

SCENARIO: To support his family and still pursue a college

education, JJ worked for a delivery service from 3:30 am until his college classes began at 9 every weekday morning. He then student taught as a basketball coach after classes. Returning home each evening he would care for his children until his wife finished her workday at 10pm. Early one morning, JJ fell asleep at the wheel of the delivery truck and crashed it into an oncoming car. JJ and the other driver, Shirley, were seriously injuring, and the vehicles were “totaled”.

Crime or Tort?

SCENARIO: On a windy fall day, Mason was burning

dry leaves in his backyard. When he went inside to answer a telephone call, flames from the fire leaped to the next-door neighbor’s fence and then to a tool shed where a small can of gasoline exploded. Soon the neighbor’s house was ablaze, and it burned to the ground.Did Mason commit a tort?

ELEMENTS OF A TORT Must be proved to establish eligibility:

1. Duty 2. Breach3. Injury4. Causation

DUTY Legal obligation to do or not to do

something Duty not to injure another Duty not to interfere with the property

rights of others Duty not to interfere with the economic

rights of others

BREACH Violation of the duty

Must be proved before injured party can collect damages

Many torts acknowledge breach only when certain mental states were possessed

Breach was intentional intentional torts Careless or negligent negligence Neither intent nor careless require? strict

liability

INJURY Generally must be proved

CAUSATION Breach of duty caused the injury Degrees of causation you can keep

tracing the cause back to someone else

Proximate Cause = exists when it is reasonably foreseeable that a breach of duty will result in an injury

GOING BACK TO THE SCENARIO: Did Mason commit a tort?

1. He owed a duty to the neighbors not to injure their property

2. He breached the duty when he left the fire unattended so it spread to neighbors property

3. Injury occurred when the neighbors house was burned

4. Leaving the fire unattended was a proximate cause of the loss of the fence, the tool shed and the house

CIVIL, CRIMINAL, OR BOTH Let’s try….