LawIn4: Assault (Intentional Torts)

Hi, you're listening to the Australian Law Student Law Info podcast. Your go to source for legal insights in 4 minutes or less. I'm Nick Hodgkinson and today we're talking about our second intentional tort assault. But first, our obligatory disclaimer. The law info is produced by law students. For law students it is not, nor is it intended to constitute legal advice. If you require legal assistance, you should contact your local Law Society who can direct you appropriately. For more information on the Australian law student, visit our website at the ozlawstudent.com OK Assault. It's our second intentional tour. It's not just about physical harm, it involves perception and intent. Legally assault can be said to occur when someone intentionally needs another person to believe that they're on the brink of immediate harm and you should refer here to Brady and Shatzle. A quick note, the actual battery doesn't need to occur in order to bring a legal action for assault. Think of it as a pre emptive strike. Acts and words can be sufficient for assault, but this can affect the quantum your client might receive when a court orders damages. Damages are something that we will discuss later in the series. So what sets assault apart from the other intentional torts? Well, assault boils down to the plaintiff having had a reasonable apprehension of imminent contact. Reasonableness will be assessed as whether the defendant has had a clear ability to carry out the battery. Assault is not about empty threats. Consider this scenario. Aiming an apparently loaded rifle constituted assault even when the rifle turned out to be empty. Note the crux here is how a reasonable person would interpret the situation giving more weight to perception than the actual threat. As with battery, we still need to establish positiveness, directness, and intention, and you can refer to the first episode for more on that. With intention, per Hall and Fonseca, we look at the defendant's intention to use force or to create that apprehension in the plaintiff. Let's run over some hypotheticals that help test our knowledge of assault. How immediate must a threat be for a plaintiff's apprehension to be reasonable? If the defendant threatens to go home, fetch a gun, and return for a showdown, is that sufficient? What if the defendant wasn't armed initially? What if the defendant's gun is a water pistol, which they represent is a functioning and loaded gun to the plaintiff? You should think about how different degrees of immediacy and reasonableness can alter the strength of your argument. And there we have at the second episode of the Australian Law, Students, Law in Four podcast, a swift exploration of the fascinating world of intentional torts. Join us next time on the Australian Law Student Law in Four podcast where we discuss false imprisonment. As always, if you have any suggestions, please e-mail us at team at the Oslo student.com or leave a comment in your review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.