Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • so there are a lot of things you can do to a person or their property

  • that will get you sued and sued good

  • there are also several defenses you can raise in court

  • to start with you could claim that the person consented

  • or agreed to the action that hurt them no matter what it might have been

  • it even counts as consent if they never come right out and tell you to do it

  • but they act in such a way that a reasonable person

  • would assume that they have consented

  • you can't claim the person consented if they were obviously

  • not capable of giving consent

  • there's a special exception now in many places where you can claim consent to

  • help an injured unconscious person

  • it's not clear why someone would sue the person

  • trying to help them but it happens

  • you can also get in trouble for doing more than the person consented to

  • unless there's some urgency that justifies it

  • while someone can give consent even if their consent is based on a mistake

  • the consent won't count if the mistake was caused by

  • or known by the person getting sued

  • a famous case of this was where a woman invited her doctor to her house

  • to help her give birth and the doctor brought some random dude

  • with him who wasn't a doctor

  • the woman said it was okay because the second guy was a doctor

  • and the actual doctor didn't correct her

  • so her consent didn't get him out being sued

  • consent also doesn't count if it's given under threats

  • another way to get out of being sued is to claim self-defense

  • you can harm someone and not get sued for it if you're using

  • reasonable force to keep someone from harming you

  • or from touching you in an offensive way

  • even if you're in a situation where force can be used for self-defense

  • that doesn't mean you can use as much force as you want to

  • the amount of force you use has to be reasonable

  • that means you can't use deadly force

  • unless you're being threatened with death or serious bodily harm

  • you can even use force in self-defense if you think you're in danger and

  • you're wrong as long as was reasonable think so

  • you are not however allowed to use force after the danger has passed

  • words by themselves almost never justify the use of force in self-defense

  • no matter how hurtful they are

  • you also can't use force in self-defense to avoid some distant future harm

  • you can use force to defend someone else without getting sued

  • provided they have the right to use force in their own defense

  • some places will let you off though if you help someone

  • who it turns out didn't deserve it

  • you can use force to defend property without being sued

  • as long as the force is reasonable

  • deadly force to preserve property is pretty much never reasonable

  • there's also the defense of necessity

  • it means when you're allowed to damage someone else's property

  • to keep something much worse from happening

  • not quite

  • better

  • moving on

  • necessity is nice because then you don't have to pay damages or go to court

  • if you cause damage to save the public or a large group of people

  • then you don't even have to pay for whatever damage you cause

  • if you only save yourself then you still have to pay for the damage you caused

  • though you won't be liable for anything extra like punitive damages

  • and there you have it

so there are a lot of things you can do to a person or their property

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it