“Tort” refers to a certain form of unlawful act that causes danger to somebody else. It covers a wide variety of acts and they are divided into subcategories. One way these torts are categorized is by the mental condition of the person who does the offense. If the person who does wrongful act with the intention of harming the other person, this is called “intentional tort.”

The simplest and common sample of intentional tort is when someone gives somebody a punch to his/her face and in this case, the wrongdoer intends to make a fist and strike it to the face of his/her victim with the purpose harming the victim. But the person who does the intentional tort needs not to intend the harm. For instance, when you surprise somebody with a heart problem, and the scare causes the other person to have a heart attack, thus, the person who frightens the person commits an intentional tort, although he/she did not intend to frighten that person into a heart attack.

Basic Intentional Torts

1. Battery is the legal word for hitting someone that comes from the verb “to batter.” This comprises a wider range of activities including sending projectiles into the body of the other person like firing a gun.
2. Assault refers to a type of attempted battery or threatening injury when there is no battery that occurs.
3. False Imprisonment is a legal definition for “confinement without legal authority.” Basically, there is nobody is allowed to confine somebody or limit anybody’s movements against his/her will. There are two main exceptions to this type: one, police has the basic authority to detain certain persons they reasonably suspect of some crimes. Two, “shopkeeper’s privilege” which permits the shopkeepers to detain certain people they suspect of shoplifting for reasonable period of time.
4. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress is a difficult tort to prove in the courts. To prove in court one’s claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, the plaintiff must show that somebody else did an extreme and outrageous act, with the intentional of scaring somebody and cause some serious distress or bodily harm.
5. Fraud is a legal term when someone lies to another person. To be successful in your lawsuit for fraud, the plaintiff has to show that the person who tells lies knows that what he was saying was false; that the other person believe him/her; that the other person who receives the lies depends on that information; and that the other person is harmed by relying on the information.
6. Defamation occurs when somebody says something false about somebody, and the lie causes harm. Defamation can come in the form of written which is traditionally termed as libel, and spoken which is traditionally called slander words.
7. Invasion of Privacy and its nature differs by the state and there are basically four types of invasion of privacy. Invasion of solitude happens when somebody interferes with somebody else’s right to be alone; Public disclosure of private/confidential facts; false light where an individual publishes untrue but not defamatory facts about somebody; and appropriation when there is an unauthorized use of somebody else’s likeness for profit.
8. Trespass has two forms: one, trespass to land and two, trespass to chattel or personal property. In both cases, trespass means using the property without the consent of its owner.
9. Conversion occurs when somebody takes the property of the other person and transforms it to their own. In unlawful world, this is called stealing.