Weekly Homestretch

WARNING: Tedius 1L nonsense ahead. Proceed with caution.

Today was a pretty good day, all in all. I’m finally getting to know folks, so that’s a plus. We have high-speed internet now, though it’s requiring us to use wireless even on the desktop PCs which seems like a horrible waste.

It was a good day for class participation: I didn’t get called on but I think I made meaningful comments in Crim and Torts. Torts was, by far, the most entertaining. (For my learned readers: We’re on Vosburg and intentional torts) After a day of discussion on the actual case, we got to talk more about the rule of law that emerged from the case.

[The reader's digest version of the case:]

Boy lightly kicks another boy under table at school. Kick aggravates a previous injury. Injured boy eventually loses all use of lower leg. Injured boy sues the kicking boy. Court awards a ton of damages. The rule to emerge is that harm need not be intended for an intentional tort to take place, all that needs to be intended is an “unlawful” act. If a person intends to (and does) act unlawfully, he or she is responsible for all damages (forseeable or not) that arise directly from the act.

[We now return you to our boring story, already in progress]

After talking about the case, we actually were asked what we thought about that particular rule of law. One of my esteemed classmates thought it “unfair” that the damages could be so great in proportion to such a small action. I disagreed (as I am wont to do) on the grounds that his perspective was from that of the injuring party and not the injured. If you look at ti from the perspective of the little boy who could never walk again, I doubt the damages would seem like fair compensation. We went back and forth a bit before the professor took up my classmate’s side of the argument and said something to the effect of “People are injured all the time by others in ways that the tort system cannot compensate them like non-negligent accidents, accidents of their own, and so on. Should we just go ahead and allow everyone who is injured by anyone or anything to recover?”

My response was simply that a particular doctrine’s deficiency in its ability to bring justice in a particular situation should not prevent us from applying that doctrine when it can bring justice — that we should not let victims of intentional torts suffer just because intentional torts can not heal all ills.

To my great surprise, the prof agreed and we went on our merry way. A bit later another (germane) point occurred to me, so I brought up the fact that such a severe penalty for intentional wrong-doing might have a the deterrant power. Our friend from earlier disagreed, asking, essentially, “where do we draw the line?” He asked if the end to which the rule was working was a sterile, insulated society where nobody interacted with each other for fear of law suit… the professor, again, took up his side of the issue and I felt compelled to defend myself again. So I answered that, ideally, the rule was working to a society in which no person intentionally wronged another person and that this did not seem like an unreasonable end to work toward. And the prof concurred.

…so anyway… this is probably boring crap to most of you, but I was pretty happy with my first day of really participating in any serious way. And this in the class with the teacher not known for his warm, cuddly ways. I don’t plan on this being an every day occurrance… unless, of course, someone says something that I think is silly.

So tomorrow is a light day — two classes, one of them being LRW… and I’ve already briefed for both of them. I have some reading to finish, but I really should have monday’s work done before I go home tomorrow afternoon… so that’ll give me a “free” weekend in which to start reading for Tuesday.