Is there liablility if Alice startles Bob and Bob damages something? The other day I saw a random clip on YouTube, where Alice sneaks up to Bob, who is vacuuming, and scares Bob. Bob gets startled and swings the vacuum into (Bob's own) expensive television, breaking the TV in the process. It got me thinking if Alice could be liable for damages here and what the respective law would be. Supplemental: Would anything change, if the TV was actually owned by Alice?
I will assume that whatever Alice did to startle Bob was a breach of a duty that she owed to Bob, in order to get to what I see as the more interesting aspect of the question: whether Bob's intervening act removes Alice's liability for the breaking of the television. There are certainly scenarios where Alice might have startled Bob without even breaching a duty, but in that case the analysis would end there. A startle reaction will almost never sever the chain of legal causation In negligence, Alice is held liable for harm that is reasonably foreseeable as a result of Alice's breach of a duty. One of the elements of a successful negligence claim is causation: Alice is not liable for harm that is too remote from her breach. On its own, proof by an injured plaintiff that a defendant was negligent does not make that defendant liable for the loss. The plaintiff must also establish that the defendant’s negligence (breach of the standard of care) caused the injury. That link is causation.1 (Clements v. Clements, 2012 SCC 32, paragraph 6) Bob's startle response would almost certainly be considered a foreseeable reaction, and thus, not sufficient to separate Alice from the breaking of the television. An instinctive human reaction, or any non-negligent human action in the chain of causation will almost never break the chain of causation, because such reactions will be held foreseeable; and even if they are not, the precise chain of events leading to an accident need not be foreseeable. (Ken Cooper‑Stephenson, Personal Injury Damages in Canada (Carswell, 1996)) See also The Restatement of Torts (Second), § 447, which says that an intervening act does not remove the defendant's liability if: &quot;(a) the actor at the time of his negligent conduct should have realized that a third person might so act, or (b) a reasonable man knowing the situation existing when the act of the third person was done would not regard it as highly extraordinary that the third person had so acted, or (c) the intervening act is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's conduct and the manner in which it is done is not extraordinarily negligent.&quot; &quot;[I]t is the general nature of the intervening acts and the accompanying risk of harm that needs to be reasonably foreseeable. Legal causation does not require that the accused must objectively foresee the precise future consequences of their conduct.&quot; (R. v. Maybin, 2012 SCC 24). Foreseeability does not require that the intervening action be probable; it only requires that it would not be brushed aside as &quot;far-fetched.&quot; The degree of probability that would satisfy the reasonable foreseeability requirement was described in The Wagon Mound (No. 2) as a &quot;real risk&quot;, i.e. &quot;one which would occur to the mind of a reasonable man in the position of the defendan[t] ... and which he would not brush aside as far-fetched&quot; (Mustapha v. Culligan of Canada Ltd., 2008 SCC 27, paragraph 13). Examples of intervening acts held to be reasonably foreseeable: Haynes v. Harwood [1935] 1 K.B. 146. A carriage owner had left a two-horse carriage unattended on a busy street. The judge accepted evidence from an independent observer that two boys had come along and one of them threw a stone at the horses and the horses bolted along the street (these boys were not before the court as co-defendants; nothing more is said of them). A constable managed to stop the horses, but was injured in the process. The carriage owner was liable in negligence: a reasonable person should have foreseen that the horses might get loose and someone be injured while trying to stop them. The court said, &quot;it is not necessary to show that this particular accident and this particular damage were probable; it is sufficient if the accident is of a class that might well be anticipated as one of the reasonable and probable results of the wrongful act.&quot; Foreseeability here does not have its colloquial meaning Greendrake's answer says that &quot;whereas Bob's shock is foreseeable, I pretty much doubt that him breaking the TV is.&quot; In my view, this takes too colloquial a view of foreseeability. As Hart and Honoré say in Causation in the Law, 2nd Ed. (1985): ... in one sense everything is foreseeable, in another nothing. The consequences of negligence are almost invariably surprises. All depends on the detail with which the harm is described. ... there will always be some details of the recoverable harm which are not foreseeable. ... the fact that harm described by reference to certain details is not foreseeable does not render the harm, more broadly described, unforeseeable. ... If we have learned from experience to expect a 'rainstorm' on seeing dark clouds, then the rainstorm was foreseeable even if, when it occurs, it has other characteristics (e.g. lasted two hours, covered an area of 40 sq. miles) which we could not foresee but which might appear, ex post facto, in a more specific description of it. Of course, foreseeability is a question of fact, and I acknowledge that a finder of fact might very well conclude that swinging a vacuum is not within a class of actions that might be anticipated by a reasonable person. While I disagree with Greendrake's analysis and conclusion, the contrast with my answer helps highlight precisely where the issue would be if this were to be litigated. 1. Note the terminology. The breach of the standard of care is the negligence. But liability only follows when the negligence causes harm. This is contrary to the framing in Dale M's answer, which says, &quot;Alice was negligent if her actions caused damage to Bob’s TV,&quot; and that &quot;[i]f we are talking about Alice’s TV then there is no negligence because Bob has suffered no damage.&quot; That language conflates negligence (the breach) with liability (breach plus causation).
Landlord or tenant responsible for the furnishing damaged after a flooding? This brief analysis of Scandinavian Contract Law explains the difficulty of addressing with certainty matters of Swedish contract law. Despite the legal and factual ambiguities, it seems to me that the contract terms and landlord's conduct preclude his entitlement to a reimbursement from you. (Disclaimers: I have never litigated in Sweden's courts; I do not purport to be knowledgeable about Swedish law; and it is unclear to me whether Swedish contract law has evolved since the date of the publication of Ramberg's criticism of Scandinavian contract law) First, it appears that the landlord was negligent by waiting several days to ask tenants to remove moldering furnishings (as these were starting to smell). If that was the landlord's earliest reaction to the flooding, then the delay might evidence [landlord's] failure to mitigate damages. In other legal systems, failure to mitigate damages is an obstacle to recovery from the sued party. Second, the landlord's unqualified instruction to throw everything away --in response to your proposal of checking for salvage-- might forfeit his entitlement to reimbursement. In this regard, page 4 of the aforementioned publication points out that [t]he Swedish Supreme court [...] generally stated that a contract containing the standard terms was deemed to have been concluded due to the parties' behaviour. Obviously, not all of the contract would be void, but only the application of the clause about tenant's financial responsibility for missing or damaged items in this particular context of landlord's delay and reckless response to your proposal. Third, in the clause regarding tenant's financial responsibility "to replace missing or damaged items", I would say that the qualifier "missing" is key. Here, the usage of "missing" connotes a deliberate act of taking items away in violation of the landlord's proprietorship, regardless of whether it was the tenant or a third party who removed/stole them. That same connotation of deliberate act should govern the very next qualifier, "damaged", absent any language that expands the latter's connotation of causality. Also a criterion of negligence would fail, because you were not notified that a flooding occurred. The contract's clarification that their "insurance doesn't cover [your] personal belongings" opens --albeit weakly-- the door to the possible interpretation that instead the policy covers the counterparty's (that is, the landlord's) belongings. On the other hand, the landlord could avail himself of arguments such as (1) tenant should have made arrangements prior to leaving for the holidays; and (2) landlord's bed &amp; mattress were not intended to be stored in the basement, and instead should have been notified toward procuring an appropriate storage for them. It is hard to make a more precise assessment without knowing more about the terms of the contract and the circumstances. Therefore, the best thing to do is to look at the subtleties in the language of the contract (as I did above regarding the deliberate nature inherent to the adjective "missing" and its interpretative effect on the adjective "damaged").
Bob can certainly &quot;engage&quot; a personal injury lawyer, but it is highly unlikely that they would take the case... Let's take a look at the facts... In Texas, you are required to register every vehicle unless it is damaged beyond repair or destroyed (it's intended to be scrapped). Bob did not do this In Texas, every registered vehicle must be insured, at a minimum, for liability insurance. Bob did not do this But, because of the insurance requirement you can get the information from TxDOT about the other vehicle's registration and insurance. It's more likely than not that the other vehicle is also uninsured, but if it is, Bob should contact Ted's insurance company. Because Bob did not register or insure the car that was parked on the street, Bob assumed liability that the insurance company would typically cover. If Bob had properly insured the vehicle, including uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (which must be declined in writing in Texas), Bob would be whole (minus the deductible). Bob's total liability should be the deductible on the vehicle. Another not-small contributing factor is that this is a self-proclaimed &quot;project vehicle&quot;, meaning it has low current value despite a possible high future value. Without insurance, the entire liability would amount to the actual current value of the vehicle, the amount it would take to buy another in exactly the same condition. Now back to the PI lawyer, they make money by suing insurance companies for personal injury (damage to your car is not a &quot;personal injury&quot;) because they have the ability to pay. Private individuals, especially those without insurance, typically do not have the ability to pay. The PI can typically recover all the attorneys fees + up to half the judgement. So even if the PI agreed to take the case, and they won some amount (let's say $50,000 which includes attorneys fees and judgement), Ted would probably not be able to pay for this. The PI goes back to the client for the fees and now Bob is in even worse condition, since a majority of the $50,000 judgement would be attorneys fees. Really the best remedy Bob has in this case is to sue Ted in small claims for the value of the vehicle up to the maximum of the court (in Texas, this is a generous $20,000). Small claims courts have a lower burden of proof and Bob can use Alan as a witness.
Typical in any of the several united-states No, this fails to meet two of the core elements of libel. The statement must be Adverse (fails) Stated by one party To a second party About a third party (fails) The case you're thinking of, where a company brags excessively about their company or products, are covered by a variety of securities and trade laws, such as false advertising. Many of these are applicable in the Federal domain, i.e. are Federal rather than state laws. Edit: Now I see you've changed the question a bit to claiming to be first. Yes, the injured party can sue for that, but they are more claiming false advertising than libel. Accusing someone of not being first-to-market is not a particularly powerful or damning claim. Oreo didn't invent the sandwich cookie nor did Apple invent the computer. So such a claim is really a lot more about the publicity than actual, provable damages; so the controversy is more likely to be aired outside the court system, or in the courts but mainly for the publicity. (an example of the latter being the &quot;Taco Tuesday&quot; trademark-busting action; IIRC Taco Bell even paid the other party's legal fees, despite prevailing.)
[if] the other driver is at fault then you can sue the other driver for the loss incurred. If the other driver was employed by a company [...] then that company is likely to pick up the bill... Not necessarily. I would say that losses are usually covered by the at-fault driver's insurance (or the MIB if uninsured). Either way, according to the OP's link &quot;the shuttle is insured by Aviva&quot; so they would seem to be liable under section 2 of the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018: Liability of insurers etc where accident caused by automated vehicle (1) Where— (a) an accident is caused by an automated vehicle when driving itself on a road or other public place in Great Britain, (b) the vehicle is insured at the time of the accident, and (c) an insured person or any other person suffers damage as a result of the accident, the insurer is liable for that damage.
There can be liability. 15 USC 52 says that &quot;It shall be unlawful for any person, partnership, or corporation to disseminate, or cause to be disseminated, any false advertisement&quot;. In the case Standard Oil v. FTC, 577 F.2d 653, one of the petitioners was Batten, Barton, Durstine Osborn, an advertising agency. In this particular case, using a set of tests established by previous case law, the court find that &quot;BBDO knew or should have known of the deceptive nature of the F-310 advertising&quot;. See p. 13ff of this FTC document regarding advertising agency liability, which summarizes the situation that An ad agency does not have to substantiate independently the claims or scientifically reexamine the advertiser’s substantiation. However, it cannot ignore obvious shortcomings or facial flaws in an advertiser’s substantiation. Cases also include catalog marketers, infomercial producers and even Home Shopping Network. Given the right knowledge, a broadcaster could therefore be liable, if they know they are broadcasting false advertising.
There are none. Damages against B’s clinic? A does not have a contract with B’s clinic. No duties nor rights without a contract. Damages against B? A does not have a contract with B. If there was a contract, we need details about it. Tort, § 823 Ⅰ BGB? No. B was neither negligent nor did he/she deliberately incur damage. Report B as criminal? A and B had consensual sexual intercourse. This consent (necessarily) comprises the risk of transmission. You cannot give “consent to facts” though. Yet here B had no knowledge of his/her contagiousness. He/she definitely did not deliberately infect A. Negligence is out of question, because there is no general expectation to get regularly tested before having sex with anyone.
No It's your device, you can do what you like with it (subject to the law - you can't hit people with it. Unless they want to be hit: whatever turns you on, turns you on). However, if you do operate it outside their instructions then they would not be legally liable if it failed and injured you or someone else or set fire to the cat or whatever. The "prohibition" would limit their legal liability.