B intentional tort cases are generally more serious

b. Intentional tort cases are generally more serious than negligence cases
because of the availability of punitive damages.
**Keep in mind that intentional tort cases are very unsettling for defendants because juries
have the option to award potentially substantial punitive damages on top of ordinary
compensatory damages.
3. Duty of Care
You owe everyone you meet, and everyone with whom you interact, some level of legal
responsibility. The specific duty of care varies in different circumstances. You usually have
a higher legal responsibility to a customer than to a casual acquaintance, for example . The
standard legal duty is to act as a reasonable person . Special duties sometimes apply,
such as when visitors come to your property. A plaintiff can argue that a defendant failed to
meet (breached) his duty of care with regular evidence, or by arguing that the defendant
was negligent as described in the reading assignment.
4. Proximate Causation and Injury Requirement
All business people, at some level, work with cause and effect issues. Brokers look for
events that will trigger a movement of share prices, and small business owners analyze the
impact that sale prices and advertising have on demand. People have many different
definitions for causation. In law, we work with proximate cause. When we hold a
defendant legally liable for harm sufered by a plaintif, we are saying that he
caused harm in a way that should have been reasonably foreseeable.
§ Imagine that Peter, who works for Pepsi, puts 200 cans of Pepsi into an empty
vending machine on Monday morning. Later that day, Karl Klutz buys a Pepsi from
the same machine and takes it out onto a second floor balcony. Karl sees Vince
Victim down below, waves to him, and fumbles the Pepsi. The can makes a perfect
arc and konks Vince on the head, knocking him unconscious. When he comes to,
Vince feels litigious.
§ Peter is sort of involved in all of this, in the sense that, if he had not restocked the
empty machine, this accident might not have happened. But he would not be
considered a proximate cause, because a jury would not say, "Ah, you should have
known better. You should have foreseen that this kind of thing would happen if you
did your job and put cans in the machine." Karl would be a proximate cause,
because a jury would say that he should have foreseen the possibility of dropping
the can and been more careful to hold onto it.
§ The last element of a successful negligence case is a demonstration that the
plaintif sufered an identifiable injury . You cannot win a negligence case if
someone almost hurts you. However, physical injuries are not required. Damage to

property, and sometimes emotional distress, are accepted by courts as the required
injury.
5. Defenses in Negligence Cases
Even if a plaintiff establishes that a defendant breached his duty of care and proximately
caused an injury, a defendant can still sometimes escape liability partially or even entirely .