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I want to have numbered elements in my torts outline but am not very good at figuring where to break into a new eliment

So for example, for assault I have "An intentional act causing imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive contact"

1- intentional act
2-causing
3-imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive contact

OR

1- intentional act
2-causing
3-imminent apprehension of a
4-harmful or offensive contact


which one would it be? and also, for future reference, any tips on how to break apart the elements

You have to break it down by the elements of the thing in question.

"Intent" and "act" are two separate elements.

1) Intentional
2) Act
3) That causes imminent apprehension
4) Of a harmful or offensive contact.


You can have intent without an act, and you can have an act without intent. So the two must be present together.

.

For my torts outline, here's what I did.

In order to satisfy a battery claim one must prove:

1. An Act

2. Intend
a. intend can be proven by either: A desire to cause harm or offensive contact, OR certain AND substantial knowledge of the consequences of the act.

3. and harmful or offensive contract resulting from the act

hope it helps!

thanks for the clarification everyone

kalvano, that makes sense, but for exam purposes, we will just have to prove intentional contact, not intent first and contact second--I would imagine separating intent and act is more useful for crim law, because they have to be established separately. I am probably going to separate it into elements for the outline as you said, because your reasoning makes sense to me, but for the exam, do you plan on saying "he had intent because xyz.." and then "his act was x, which is proven by yz" or will you just say "his act was intentional as proven by xyz"

Our prof has touched several times on their being a difference between "act" and "intent", so yeah, I will probably separate them out for him, since he seems big on that.

He defines an act as "the external manifestation of the actors' will."

He's mainly drawing a distinction that if X grabs your hand and uses it to throw a rock at Z, you aren't guilty of an intentional act against Z.

kalvano wrote:Our prof has touched several times on their being a difference between "act" and "intent", so yeah, I will probably separate them out for him, since he seems big on that.

He defines an act as "the external manifestation of the actors' will."

He's mainly drawing a distinction that if X grabs your hand and uses it to throw a rock at Z, you aren't guilty of an intentional act against Z.

makes sense. thanks. I'll ask my professor about this to see what he wants

I doubt it would hurt you to break it down that way, and who knows, you might get bonus points for drawing that distinction.

kalvano wrote:I doubt it would hurt you to break it down that way, and who knows, you might get bonus points for drawing that distinction.

thats true, I think i initially felt it might seem redundant in an answer, but your example made it a little easier to see how the two could be separated out on an exam. thanks!

1)intentional act that 2) creates apprehension of 3)imminent battery <---that's how I like to break it down.

But this is how my prof wrote it on the board - a physical act of a threatening nature or an offer of corporal injury which puts an individual in reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm.

So who knows.

You could always just refer to assault as the "free battery preview".

I broke imminent and apprehension down into two pieces because we were assigned cases that dealt with the two separately. Also, it makes more sense for you to put apprehension of imminent h or o contact (switch imminent and apprehension.)

Its not just any harmful or offensive contact. If you feel like you might be punched in 5 minutes, thats not assault. So you might have an imminent apprehension of a punch in 5 minutes, but that won't be enough for assault. You have to apprehend imminent contact (no significant delay.)