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Legal Environment
Chapter 6
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Actionable | Capable of serving as the basis of a lawsuit. |
| Actual Malice | The deliberate intent to cause harm, which exists when a person makes a statement either knowing that it is false or showing a reckless disregard for whether it is true. |
| Appropriation | In tort law, the use by one person of another person’s name, likeness, or other identifying characteristic without permission and for the benefit of the user. |
| Assault | Any word or action intended to make another person fearful of immediate physical harm. |
| Assumption of Risk | A doctrine under which a plaintiff may not recover for injuries or damage suffered from risks he or she knows of and has voluntarily assumed. |
| Battery | The unexcused, harmful or offensive, intentional touching of another. |
| Business Invitee | A person, such as a customer or a client, who is invited onto business premises by the owner of those premises. |
| Business Tort | Wrongful interference with another’s business rights. |
| Causation in Fact | An act or omission without which an event would not have occurred. |
| Comparative Negligence | A rule in tort law that reduces the plaintiff’s recovery in proportion to the plaintiff’s degree of fault, rather than barring recovery completely. |
| Compensatory Damages | A monetary award equivalent to the actual value of injuries or damage sustained by the aggrieved party. |
| Contributory Negligence | A rule in tort law that completely bars the plaintiff from recovering any damages if the damage suffered is partly the plaintiff’s own fault. |
| Conversion | Wrongfully taking or retaining possession of an individual’s personal property and placing it in the service of another. |
| Cyber Tort | A tort committed in cyberspace. |
| Damages | Money sought as a remedy for a breach of contract or a tortious action. |
| Defamation | Anything published or publicly spoken that causes injury to another’s good name, reputation, or character. |
| Disparagement of Property | An economically injurious falsehood made about another’s product or property. |
| Dram Shop Act | A state statute that imposes liability on the owners of bars and taverns for injuries resulting from accidents caused by intoxicated persons when they contributed to the intoxication. |
| Duty of Care | The duty of all persons, as established by tort law, to exercise a reasonable amount of care in their dealings with others. |
| Fraudulent Misrepresentation | Any misrepresentation, either by misstatement or by omission of a material fact, knowingly made with the intention of deceiving another and on which a reasonable person would and does rely to his or her detriment. |
| Good Samaritan Statute | A state statute stipulating that persons who provide emergency services to someone in peril cannot be sued for negligence. |
| Intentional Tort | A wrongful act that is knowingly committed. |
| Libel | Defamation in writing or other form having the quality of permanence (such as a digital recording). |
| Malpractice | Professional misconduct or the lack of the requisite degree of skill as a professional. |
| Market-Share Liability | A theory under which liability is shared among all firms that manufactured and distributed a particular product during a certain period of time. |
| Negligence | The failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in similar circumstances. |
| Negligence Per Se | An action or failure to act in violation of a statutory requirement. |
| Privilege | A legal right, exemption, or immunity granted to a person or a class of persons. |
| Product Liability | The liability of manufacturers, sellers, and lessors of goods to consumers, users, and bystanders for injuries or damages that are caused by the goods. |
| Proximate Cause | Legal cause, which exists when the connection between an act and an injury is strong enough to justify imposing liability. |
| Puffery | A salesperson’s often exaggerated claims concerning the quality of property offered for sale. |
| Punitive Damages | Monetary damages that may be awarded to a plaintiff to punish the defendant and deter similar conduct in the future. |
| Reasonable Person Standard | The standard of behavior expected of a hypothetical “reasonable person.” |
| Res Ipsa Loquitur | A doctrine under which negligence may be inferred simply because an event occurred, if it is the type of event that would not occur in the absence of negligence. |
| Slander | Defamation in oral form. |
| Slander of Quality (Trade Libel) | The publication of false information about another’s product, alleging that it is not what its seller claims. |
| Slander of Title | The publication of a statement that denies or casts doubt on another’s legal ownership of any property, causing financial loss to that property’s owner. |
| Spam | Bulk e-mails sent in large quantities without the consent of the recipients. |
| Strict Liability | Liability regardless of fault. |
| Tort | A civil wrong not arising from a breach of contract. |
| Tortfeasor | One who commits a tort. |
| Trespass to Land | The entry onto, above, or below the surface of land owned by another without the owner’s permission. |
| Trespass to Personal Property | The unlawful taking or harming of another’s personal property or the interference with another’s right to the exclusive possession of his or her personal property. |
| Unreasonably Dangerous Product | A product that is defective to the point of threatening a consumer’s health and safety. |