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Intentional Torts: The Seven You Must Know Cold

How to use this lesson

  1. Find the act and the intent: did the defendant act to cause the contact, apprehension, confinement, or entry, or know it was substantially certain to happen?
  2. Name the tort with BAFIE-TC, then check each of its elements.
  3. If the defendant hit the wrong person, or caused a different tort than the one intended, check transferred intent.
  4. Run the defenses: consent, self-defense, defense of others, defense of property, necessity, and shopkeeper's privilege.
  5. Set a 5-minute timer for the four practice questions. A few days later, redo the misses with the cards (spaced repetition).

Answer first: An intentional tort needs intent: acting with the purpose of causing a result, or knowing the result is substantially certain to happen. A wish to hurt anyone isn't required. Learn the seven torts (battery, assault, false imprisonment, IIED, trespass to land, trespass to chattels, conversion), then check defenses.

Big picture

  1. Intent means a purpose to cause the result, or knowing the result is substantially certain. It doesn't require wanting to hurt anyone.
  2. Three torts protect the person (battery, assault, false imprisonment), one protects the mind (IIED), and three protect property (trespass to land, trespass to chattels, conversion).
  3. After you find the tort, check defenses: consent, self-defense, defense of others, defense of property, necessity, and shopkeeper's privilege.

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The rule (plain words)

If you act meaning to cause a particular kind of contact, fear, confinement, or entry (or knowing it's substantially certain to happen), you're liable when it happens. Your motive doesn't matter; a joke still counts.

Elements / tests

  1. Battery: intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact, or to cause the apprehension of one, and a harmful or offensive contact results. Intent means you acted for that purpose or knew the result was substantially certain. The contact can be indirect, such as a fall you caused.
  2. Assault: intent to cause a reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact, or intent to cause the contact itself, and the plaintiff does reasonably apprehend that contact. Words alone usually aren't enough.
  3. False imprisonment: intentional confinement within boundaries, with no reasonable way out, that the plaintiff knows about or is harmed by.
  4. IIED: extreme and outrageous conduct, done intentionally or recklessly, that causes severe emotional distress.
  5. Trespass to land: intentionally entering, or causing a thing to enter, someone else's land. A mistake about whose land it is doesn't excuse you.
  6. Trespass to chattels: intentionally dispossessing someone of a chattel, or using or meddling with it, when that causes dispossession, damage, or loss of use for a substantial time. Harmless meddling, without dispossession, isn't enough.
  7. Conversion: intentionally exercising so much control over someone else's chattel that full value is fair compensation.

Defenses

Once the elements are met, check whether a defense excuses the conduct. These are general rules; details differ by state.

  1. Consent: Express (words or writing) or implied (conduct or custom, such as playing a contact sport). It must be given freely by someone with capacity, so consent won by coercion, or by fraud about the nature of the contact, doesn't count. It covers only what was agreed to: a surgeon who operated on the ear the patient hadn't agreed to could be liable for battery (Mohr v. Williams, Minn. 1905).
  2. Self-defense: You may use reasonable force when you reasonably believe you're about to be attacked, even if that belief turns out to be wrong. The force must be proportionate to the threat: deadly force (force likely to cause death or serious bodily injury) only against a threat of death, serious bodily injury, or rape. The first aggressor generally can't claim it.
  3. Defense of others: The same rules, applied to protecting someone else. Most states require only a reasonable belief that the other person needed defending; some also require a special relationship, such as parent and child.
  4. Defense of property: Reasonable force to stop someone from entering your land or taking your things, but, under the general rule, not deadly force to protect property alone. Owners who rigged a spring gun in an empty farmhouse were liable to the intruder it shot (Katko v. Briney, Iowa 1971).
  5. Necessity: Public necessity (acting in an emergency to protect the community from a greater harm) is a complete defense: no damages. Private necessity (acting to protect your own interests) lets you use someone else's property during the emergency, and the owner can't throw you out while it lasts, but you pay for the actual damage you cause. A ship kept tied to a dock through a storm owed for the damage to the dock (Vincent v. Lake Erie Transportation Co., Minn. 1910).
  6. Shopkeeper's privilege: It starts with a trigger: the merchant must reasonably believe the person is stealing or has stolen. Then the merchant may detain the person on the premises (some states, such as Ohio by statute, also allow a stop in the store's immediate vicinity), in a reasonable manner, for a reasonable time, to investigate. Without that reasonable belief there's no privilege, however short or polite the stop.

Key cases

Case Year Holding (one line) Link
Garratt v. Dailey (Wash.) 1955 A 5-year-old who pulled a chair away is liable for battery if he knew with substantial certainty that she would try to sit where it had been. CourtListener — verified 2026-10-21
Snyder v. Phelps (U.S.) 2011 The First Amendment barred IIED liability for picketing about matters of public concern held on a public street near a funeral. CourtListener — verified 2026-10-21
Talmage v. Smith (Mich.) 1894 A man who threw a stick meaning to hit one boy, and instead hit another boy on the shed roof, was liable to the boy he hit. His intent carried over. CourtListener — verified 2026-10-21
Katko v. Briney (Iowa) 1971 Owners who set a spring gun to guard an unoccupied farmhouse were liable to the intruder it shot. Under the general rule, deadly force can't be used to protect property alone. CourtListener — verified 2026-10-21
Vincent v. Lake Erie Transportation Co. (Minn.) 1910 A shipowner who kept its ship tied to a dock during a storm to save the ship had to pay for the damage to the dock. Private necessity doesn't excuse paying for actual harm. CourtListener — verified 2026-10-21

Common exam traps

Mnemonic

BAFIE-TC is LearnFun original packaging of public doctrine.

"BAFIE-TC" ("Baffy, Tee-See"): Battery, Assault, False imprisonment, IIED, Entry (trespass to land), Trespass to chattels, Conversion. Picture a golfer, Baffy, teeing off and hitting all seven.

Spaced-rep cards

# Front Back
1 BAFIE-TC expands to? Battery, Assault, False imprisonment, IIED, Entry (trespass to land), Trespass to chattels, Conversion.
2 Intent means? A purpose to cause the result, or knowing it's substantially certain. No wish to harm is needed (Garratt v. Dailey).
3 Assault: what kind of threatened contact? An imminent one. A threat about later isn't assault.
4 When isn't an area "bounded"? When there's a reasonable, safe way out.
5 Trespass to chattels or conversion? Ask how serious the interference was. Serious enough that full value is fair pay: conversion. Lesser interference that dispossesses or causes harm: trespass to chattels.

One-page cheat sheet

TOPIC: Intentional Torts
ASK:
  1. Intent: purpose or substantial certainty (transferred intent?)
  2. Which interest: body / mind / land / chattel?
  3. Elements met? Then check defenses.
RULE IN ONE LINE: Meant the act + the result happened = liability, no injury needed for most.
DO NOT CONFUSE WITH: negligence (carelessness); conversion vs. trespass to chattels (how serious the interference was).

Timed practice questions (original)

Timer: 5 minutes. Made-up facts. Set a timer and answer all four before you read any key. Write down every miss and why you missed it.

Q1. During an argument at a bus stop, a man tells a neighbor, "Next week, when you least expect it, I'll knock you flat," and walks away. The neighbor is frightened for days. Is the man liable for assault? (A) Yes, because the neighbor was really afraid. (B) Yes, because he threatened a harmful contact. (C) No, because the threatened contact wasn't imminent. (D) No, because he never touched the neighbor. Answer: C. Assault needs a reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact, and a threat about next week isn't imminent. (A) and (B) skip the imminence step. (D) is wrong because assault never requires a touching. BAFIE-TC: this is the A.

Q2. An office worker, angry at a coworker, locks the break room's hallway door to keep the coworker inside. The room's other door, to an open courtyard, is unlocked, and the coworker uses it every day. The coworker stays in the room for an hour anyway. False imprisonment? Answer: Probably not. A reasonable, safe way out that the coworker knew about means the room wasn't a bounded area. The worker's bad motive doesn't fill that gap.

Q3. A roommate takes a housemate's bike without asking, rides it to the store, and returns it unharmed 30 minutes later. A week later the roommate takes it again and, on a dare, rides it off a pier, and the bike is lost. Which tort fits each ride? Answer: The first ride is trespass to chattels: taking the bike away dispossessed the housemate for a while, even though it came back unharmed. The second ride is conversion, because the interference was so serious that the bike's full value is fair compensation.

Q4. Trap. At a backyard party, a guest yanks a folding stool away just as the host starts to sit, meaning it as a joke. The host hits the patio and breaks a wrist. The guest says, truthfully, "I only wanted a laugh. I never meant to hurt anyone." Is the guest liable for battery? (A) No, because the guest didn't intend to harm the host. (B) No, because the guest never touched the host. (C) Yes, because the guest knew to a substantial certainty that the host would hit the ground. (D) No, because a prank can be at most negligence. Answer: C. The trap is treating a wish to harm as the test. Intent for battery means a purpose to cause the contact, or knowing it's substantially certain; a joking motive doesn't matter, so (A) is wrong. (B) is wrong because the contact can be indirect, as with the pulled-away chair in Garratt v. Dailey. (D) is wrong because knowing the fall was substantially certain makes this intentional, not careless. BAFIE-TC: this is the B.

Next lessons

Negligence elements · Bar exam mnemonics under the clock · Contract formation · All bar lessons

Sources

Last checked: 2026-10-21