Three established torts require the defendant’s behavior to be “offensive” or “highly offensive” in order to be actionable: offensive battery, public disclosure of true private facts, and intrusion on seclusion. Although what links these “offensiveness” torts together has not been recognized before, this Article demonstrates that they occupy a sub-category of tort liability that is coherent, insight-generating, and useful. The torts developed at different times and in a sense for different reasons, but all three rest on the same principle: the idea that individual autonomy involves not only inviolable bodily space, but also inviolable private and informational space. What counts as actionable wrongdoing for these torts depends on the cultural context, because what is considered offensive conduct may vary, as cultural conditions change. The typical victim (or observer) of one of these torts must plausibly have the reaction “How dare you?” for the offensiveness element of the tort to be satisfied. That is what links these three superficially disparate torts together, and warrants understanding them together, as protections against invasions of the different forms of inviolable space that are a core feature of every individual’s autonomy.
Three established torts require the defendant’s behavior to be “offensive” or “highly offensive” in order to be actionable: offensive battery, public...
It has long been said that the common law "works itself pure" But in the law of torts, not always. This Article reveals and analyzes the...
Public nuisance has lived many lives. A centuries-old doctrine defined as an unreasonable interference with a right common to the public, it is...
This paper, prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” at DePaul Law School, addresses the tort of offensive battery. This is an ancient...
The requirement of harm has significantly impeded the enforcement of privacy law. In most tort and contract cases, plaintiffs must establish that they...
This Article, written for the annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy, chronicles a series of developments in American history that...
For over a decade, a battle has been raging in the trial courts of this country over something called the "reptile theory," often simply referred to...
Tort Law and the Construction of Change studies the interaction of law and social change in American history. Tort law—civil law made by judges, not...
Through the standing doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a new step toward severely limiting the effective enforcement of privacy laws. The...
Today all tort lawyers, scholars, and teachers understand that there are three bases of liability in tort: intent, negligence, and strict liability...
The future of tort theory cannot be sensibly imagined without understanding its past. Our aim is to understand where tort theory has been in order to...
This is the third edition of the first casebook in the United States devoted exclusively to trade secret law. As with previous editions, it is...
Very few developments have ever transformed either tort or insurance law. One development -- as important in our time as the adoption of liability for...