no, not the pastry kind, the legal kind

a tort is something you sue someone for doing to you

it's not very delicious at all

one kind of tort is the intentional kind: this is it something you intend

to do to another person that causes damage now you don't necessarily need to intend to

cause the specific harm that they sue you for, you just need to attend to

affect the other person and harm needs to result from your actions so if you

intend to give them a good scare and they have a heart attack and die you

don't get off the hook because you didn't intend to kill them if you do

something and a harmful result is possible but not substantially certain you can get in

trouble for acting recklessly but you wouldn't get in trouble for acting intentionally

you can even intend to commit one tort against someone and get

sued for a different one do you accidentally commit in the process

so what are a few common intentional torts first there's battery

...no, battery is the intentional infliction of harmful or offensive contact

you can't sue over ordinary and reasonable contact though

even if you personally find it offensive

assault is, no... assault is something that gets mixed up with battery a lot

where battery is harmful or offensive contact assault is

giving someone the reasonable belief they were about to make harmful or

offensive contact with them you'll note that I said reasonable

if most people wouldn't think they were about to be touched

then you can't sue for assault you'll also note that I said

the belief has to be that they are about to be touched

you can't be assaulted if the contact could come at some later point

most states have a rule that words alone aren't enough to justify believing you're about to be touched

assault is different than attempted battery

attempted battery is attempting to cause contact and failing where assault is

intending to make someone think you were trying to harm them even if you never meant to

false imprisonment is where you confine someone against their will

the confinement has to have definite physical boundaries and the trapped person

can only sue for false imprisonment if there are no reasonable means of escape

I said reasonable means of escape you can even be falsely imprisoned if the

only thing holding you there are threats of harm in the near future

finally we turn to intentional infliction of emotional distress

the name kinda says it all

it's where you intentionally inflict emotional distress not just anything counts

the conduct needs to be so extreme and outrageous that it

goes outside all bounds of decency

it's a tough test to meet one of the more famous cases where someone told

a woman as a practical joke that her husband horribly injured and was near

death so she had nervous collapse the victim can recover if they just happen

to be very sensitive and they also have to show that they actually suffered

distress not just that what happened to them was really horrible so being very

thick skinned would hurt your ability to recover

you can be sued for things you intentionally do to property

as well as for things you intentionally do to people

one tort about property is trespass there's trespass to land and trespass to channels

chattels is just ye olde English for movable property

trespass to land is when you enter someone else's land without permission

or when you enter with permission but you don't leave when the permission ends

you can't be sued if you didn't enter the other person's land on purpose but

you can be sued if you enter the land on purpose but

mistakenly think you're not trespassing

you don't even need to enter the land personally to cause a trespass if you

cause another object to enter the land then you've still trespassed

it used to be that your land rights extended upwards to the heavens and down into the earth

now you get rights for a short distance to the direction but nothing further

which makes sense from the perspective of the airlines

trespass to chattels is when you interfere with someone else's use of their personal property

it's not just stealing the thing because that's its own tort called conversion

for trespass to chattels you have to show that there was some damage to the owner

either from their property losing value from the owner being unable to use it for some significant period

conversion is taking something permanently it means to

convert the property from the owner's to your own which requires paying the full

value as damages it does not mean changing the property's religion

the property either needs to be taken entirely and not returned or the value

needs to have been reduced enough that it is considered the equivalent of just taking it

and there you have it