Text 5c

I. Read and translate the text. Sum up the information you’ve learned from it: what are some common intentional torts?

1. Assault

A person has the right to be free from fear of personal injury from others. Assault consists of placing another person in fear of an immediate harmful or offensive touching. (Note that there need be no actual physical contact.) There must be a threat of injury, coupled with an apparent ability to carry it into effect.

2. Battery

A battery is frequently the continuation of an assault, and so one frequently reads about «an assault and battery». Shooting, pushing in anger, spitting at, or throwing a pie in the face of another are all batteries. When the victim is hit without warning from behind, there is a battery without assault.

If the contact is not intentional there is no battery. Also, the contact may be justified. For example, when you act in self-defense, you have not committed a battery. Further, there may be consent to the contact. Thus a boxer does not commit battery because the opponent consents to the contact.

3. Defamation

A person has the right to be free from false reports about his or her character or conduct. The victim's reputation is undermined by such reports. If the defamation is spoken, it is slander. If the defamation is written or printed, it is libel. To be legally defamatory, the material must (1) be false, (2) be communicated to a third person and (3) bring the victim into disrepute, contempt, or ridicule by others.

4. Invasion of Privacy

Invasion of privacy is a tort, defined as, the unwelcome and unlawful intrusion into one's private life so as to cause outrage, mental suffering, or humiliation.

In general, privacy is the right to be left alone if one so wishes. Specifically, it includes freedom from unnecessary publicity regarding personal matters. It also includes freedom from commercial exploitation of one’s name, picture without permission. The right to privacy bans illegal eavesdropping by listening and electronic devices, interference with telephone calls, and unau­thorized opening of letters and telegrams.

However, the right of privacy is not unlimited. For example, the FBI is permitted to tap telephone lines secretly, under limited circumstances, when such action is necessary for the national defense. Also, public figures, such as politicians, actors and actresses, and people in the news, have limited rights of privacy.

Even ordinary citizens may not complain if they are included in pictures taken at public events, such as games and rallies, which are later printed in newspapers.

5. Trespassing

Trespass is a wrongful entry onto the property of another. However, trespass may consist of other forms of interference with the possession of property. Dumping rubbish on the land of another or breaking the windows of a neighbor's house are trespasses.

Of course, intent is required to commit the tort of trespass. However, the only requirement is that the intruder intended to be on the particular property. If a person thought she was walking on her own property, but was mistaken, there would be a trespass because she intended to be on that particular property.