Is willingly and knowingly touching a person in public without a good reason harassment? Hypothetical Situation Person A: A person with autism. Person B: A person shooting videos for social media making fun of unsuspecting people like person A. Person A is enjoying a meal in a restaurant. They're sitting at a table, not in the way of people that need to pass through. Person B sneaks behind person A and tabs person A on the shoulder while trying to keep their presence hidden. Person A gets a sensory input overload due to their autism. The authorities are involved to deal with the situation. Person A wants the authorities to write a report as person A intends to sue person B for harassment. Question Does person A have a case in this specific situation? Reason for asking This is an ongoing discussion between a few people, yet none of us have the required legal knowledge to get to a conclusion. Searching up the definition of Harassment didn't help much either: &quot;Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy), national origin, older age (beginning at age 40), disability, or genetic information (including family medical history).&quot; Autism is a disability and touching would be unwelcome conduct. However, person A doesn't know person B suffers for this disability, yet also has no reasonable reason to touch person B as it's just for their own entertainment.
new-south-wales No it's not harassment State and territory laws criminalise stalking. These offences often target behaviour amounting to harassment There are also state and territory offences that capture harassment at work, in family or domestic contexts, and in schools and other educational institutions. &quot;Harassment&quot; requires a pattern of behaviour which is missing from your example. It's probably the tort of battery A battery is a voluntary and positive act, done with the intention of causing contact with another, that directly causes that contact: Barker et al at p 36. See Carter v Walker (2010) 32 VR 1 at [215] for a summary of the definition of “battery”. The requisite intention for battery is simply this: the defendant must have intended the consequence of the contact with the plaintiff. The defendant need not know the contact is unlawful. He or she need not intend to cause harm or damage as a result of the contact. The modern position, however, is that hostile intent or angry state of mind are not necessary to establish battery: Rixon v Star City Pty Ltd, above, at [52]. It is for that reason that a medical procedure carried out without the patient’s consent may be a battery. On the other hand, it is not every contact that will be taken to be a battery. People come into physical contact on a daily basis. For example it is impossible to avoid contact with other persons in a crowded train or at a popular sporting or concert event. The inevitable “jostling” that occurs in these incidents in every day life is simply not actionable as a battery: Rixon at [53]–[54]; Colins v Wilcock [1984] 3 All ER 374 per Robert Goff LJ.
In the US, there are no (and can be no) laws against hate speech. You also cannot sue a person for using an ethnic or similar epithet. A false accusation, however, might be grounds for a defamation lawsuit. Word connotations do not matter, what matters is the denotation, for example calling someone a "rapist" denotes a specific criminal act. Even calling someone a rapist isn't necessarily defamatory, since hyperbole abounds especially on the internet, so in order to actually be defamation, the statement would have to be understood as a particular accusation (a form of unlawful sexual assault). A defamatory statement has to be made with reckless disregard for the truth of a statement, which is not the case in the situation you describe (perhaps the person correctly said that so-and-so is a therapist, but was ineffective in their use of English).
Rudeness is not a crime Thankfully, or I’d be writing this from jail. The threat or actually of intentional and unwanted physical contact is a crime. Historically these were seperate common law crimes (and torts) of assault and battery respectively. However, in most jurisdictions these have been codified and merged and redefined so there is common assault (which merges historic assault and battery and is what you are asking about), indecent assault, sexual assault etc. In general, there must be an intentionality to the contact - accidentally colliding with someone is not assault (although it can be the tort of negligence). Similarly the contact must be unwanted - participating in a game of rugby means you want to be tackled (in a legal sense, in a sports sense you don’t want to be tackled, you want to score). And finally it must intend harm - holding your hands up to prevent a collision does not intend harm even if harm may result, punching someone does. In the cases you describe, the aggressor is the “elderly person” and they have committed a crime. I am interested in the suggestion that public opinion in first-world countries like Canada is that being old and annoyed justifies you beating someone. That is not my understanding of public opinion in Australia- old people have to follow the rule of law here just like everybody else.
There have been cases in the UK where paying someone's legal bills was interpreted as joining their case. So when A with no money libels someone, and B with deep pockets pays A's lawyer, then B risks being held liable for damages if A gets convicted. So B should be very careful. Just giving you money is probably the safest. But attorney-client privilege is between attorney and client. I have been laid off twice with my company asking me to take an employment lawyer and paying for it. (Interestingly each time the bill was exactly the maximum amount the company was willing to pay :-) It would have been absurd if my company could demand information that is under attorney-client privilege just because they paid the bill. Why did two companies pay the lawyers bill? Because that way they ensure that the separation is without problems. The lawyer explained the settlement contract and what it meant exactly. They also checked that the contract didn’t contain anything unacceptable which the company would have fixed. So if I had tried to sue them later I would have no chance to win (but there was no reason to sue). Another reason not to sue was that the company offered I settlement that was very significantly more than was legally required, but if you sued them you would only get what you got in court - most likely less than you would get without suing. So basically they paid to make sure I would have no reason to sue them later.
This is the overview of employment discrimination by the EEOC (no legal reason for them to specifically put this under &quot;youth&quot;). To &quot;discriminate&quot; against someone means to treat that person differently, or less favorably, for some reason... The laws enforced by EEOC protect you from employment discrimination when it involves: Unfair treatment because of your race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, age (age 40 or older), or genetic information. Harassment by managers, co-workers, or others in your workplace, because of your race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, age (age 40 or older), or genetic information. A subtype of harassment is &quot;hostile environment harassment&quot;. See the EEOC page on harassment. It is unwelcome conduct that is based on race... Harassment becomes unlawful where 1) enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or 2) the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive. Also it is illegal to punish a person for complaining about harassment. On the face of it, this could constitute racial harassment. The EEOC suggests that it is illegal here, in their FAQ Are White employees protected from race discrimination even though they are not a minority? Yes. You are protected from different treatment at work on the basis of your race, whether you are White, Black, or some other race. Although this is an advisory from the Dep't of Interior and not the EEOC, it is reasonable to assume that it was at least minimally vetted by competent lawyers who know discrimination law. What is prohibited is Unwelcome conduct, verbal or physical, including intimidation, ridicule, insult, comments, or physical conduct, that is based on an individual’s protected status or protected activities under Personnel Bulletin 18-01, when the behavior can reasonably be considered to adversely affect the work environment, or an employment decision affecting the employee is based upon the employee’s acceptance or rejection of such conduct (where race is a protected status). I don't know of any case law that establishes for certain that what you describe is illegal. The ministerial exception allows a religion to follow the rules of the religion in hiring its ministers, but otherwise doesn't exempt religions from prohibitions against discrimination.
The relevant (criminal) defence is Sec 11(b)(3) [the Civil defence in Sec 11(a)(iii) is an easier one]: (3) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, it shall be a defence to prosecution under this subsection if the defendant committed the offense based on a good faith belief that he was acting to protect himself or herself, a member of his or her family, or any other individual, from bodily harm from any endangered or threatened species. I would say that the defendant could easily demonstrate a "good faith belief that he was acting to ... any other individual, from bodily harm from any endangered or threatened species." Even if there were other ways to rescue the child other than lethal force to the gorilla they all would have necessitated exposing the child to a longer period of danger, exposing another person to danger or may have had less predictable outcomes (e.g. tranquilisers have an onset time) all of which would be unconscionable.
Following you around with the intent of harassing you is stalking. I don't know whether there's going to be a law actually requiring social distancing in Florida. In other states, I've seen laws set up to make it a crime to violate an order of the Director of Public Health or something like that. I don't know whether Florida actually has an order requiring social distancing by the general public.
No. Causing someone "pain and suffering" is not against the law; it is merely one kind of damages that can be awarded when someone has done something that is against the law. You may, for instance, endure pain and suffering from a car accident or shooting, in which case you could collect damages for your pain and suffering after proving that the other party committed the torts of negligence or battery, which are illegal. But if you were enduring pain and suffering from the last episode of Lost, you could not collect damages for your pain and suffering because it is not against the law to write a crappy finale. So in your case, cannot sue for pain and suffering based simply on the existence of a secret audio recording. North Carolina allows secret audio recordings, and it does not make exceptions for audio recordings that hurt someone's feelings. But to go beyond your explicit question, there still remains the possibility that you could pursue a legal action. If the other party used that recording in a way that violated the law, that might give rise to a tort that would support an award of damages for pain and suffering. If they publicly distributed a recording of themselves having sex with someone, that might constitute the tort of public disclosure of private facts. If they edited the recording to make it sound like someone had said something that they had not and then gave it to someone else, that might be grounds for a libel action.