Intentional Torts: Transferred Intent
Transferred intent is a doctrine that lets a plaintiff borrow the defendant's intent from a different target or even a different tort.
16. Transferred Intent
For the intentional torts of battery, assault, and trespass to land, intent may “transfer.”
- Transferred intent may operate in two different ways.
- First, the intent to commit an assault, battery, or trespass to land can support liability for either of the other two torts. For example, a person who intends only to create an apprehension of a harmful or offensive contact, but causes a harmful or offensive contact, is liable for battery. Conversely, a person who intends to cause a harmful or offensive contact, but causes only an apprehension of a harmful or offensive contact, is liable for assault.
- Second, the intent to commit one of these torts with respect to one person can transfer to another person who suffers the contact, apprehension, or land entry. A person who intends to cause a contact with or apprehension in X, and who succeeds in causing a contact with or apprehension in Y, is liable to Y.
- Of the torts tested on the Nevada FLE, transferred intent applies among battery, assault, and trespass to land, but not with respect to Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress or Nuisance (tested as a Real Property concept).
Transferred intent lets a plaintiff borrow the defendant's intent from a different target or a different tort. It operates only among battery, assault, and trespass to land, and never reaches emotional distress.
Transferred intent is a doctrine that lets a plaintiff borrow the defendant's intent from a different target or even a different tort. The defendant has to have the intent for one of three intentional torts: battery, assault, or trespass to land. Once that intent exists, it can move in two directions.
- 1Across torts (tort to tort): if the defendant intended an assault but actually caused a contact, the intent fills in the battery, and vice versa.
- 2Across victims (victim to victim): if the defendant aimed at one person but hit a different person, the intent follows the harm to whoever was actually contacted, put in apprehension, or whose land was entered.
The single most important boundary is the closed set. This whole doctrine lives among battery, assault, and trespass to land only. It does not reach intentional infliction of emotional distress, and nuisance is not even a Torts concept on this exam.
A stem that asks you to transfer a battery or assault intent into an emotional distress claim is asking for something the doctrine cannot do. There is no bridge to feelings.
"Three torts in, three torts out."
Transferred intent only plays among battery, assault, and trespass to land.
Intent comes in for one of the three; liability can come out for any of the three.
Nothing else gets in or out.
"Wrong target, wrong tort, still on the hook." Two ways to transfer: aim at X but reach Y (victim to victim), or intend one of the three torts but accomplish another (tort to tort).
Both work, and they can stack in one fact pattern.
"No bridge to feelings." Emotional distress is outside the club.
If the call asks you to carry a battery or assault intent into an emotional-distress claim, the bridge is out.
No transfer.
A man is furious at a rival and throws a rock at him, meaning to hit him in the chest. The rock sails past the rival and instead strikes a bystander standing nearby, bruising her arm. The bystander sues for battery.
Suppose the rock misses everyone but the bystander sees it whistle past her face and is briefly placed in apprehension of being hit.
Suppose the rock misses everyone, no one is touched and no one is put in apprehension, but the bystander is so upset by the near miss that she suffers severe emotional distress and sues for intentional infliction of emotional distress, arguing the battery intent should transfer.
A 'yes' answer that carries a battery or assault intent into an intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim, or that treats a nuisance as a transferred-intent tort.
Transferred intent operates only among battery, assault, and trespass to land; it never bridges to emotional distress, and nuisance is not a Torts concept on this exam.A 'no' answer reasoning that the defendant directed no intent at, or did not foresee harming, the person actually injured.
The victim-to-victim mode transfers the intent to whoever actually suffers the contact, apprehension, or land entry; intent aimed at the actual victim is not required.A 'no' answer resting on a true but irrelevant fact: the defendant 'only meant to scare,' 'only meant a contact,' or 'caused no harm to the land.'
The tort-to-tort mode cures the intent/result mismatch, and neither assault nor trespass to land requires actual harm.A 'yes' answer that reaches the right outcome through an out-of-scope theory such as recklessness or abnormally dangerous activity.
Liability rests on the transfer of an intentional-tort intent; name the doctrine, not a strict-liability or negligence label.the stem gives you a defendant who aimed an intentional act at one target but landed it on a different person, or who intended one of the three torts (a scare, a contact, or a land entry) but accomplished a different one of the three.
The moment the intended target and the actual victim do not match, or the intended tort and the completed tort do not match, run transferred intent.
Then check the closed set: if the completed claim is battery, assault, or trespass to land, the intent transfers; if the claim is emotional distress or nuisance, the transfer fails and that is almost certainly the trap.
Intending to hit a heckler in the back with a snowball, a street performer hurled the snowball as hard as he could. The snowball flew just over the heckler's shoulder and the heckler, seeing it coming straight at his head, ducked in alarm before it sailed past without touching him. The heckler sued the performer for assault, and the performer responded that he had been trying to make contact, not merely to frighten.
Is the heckler likely to prevail on his assault claim?
During an argument in a crowded kitchen, a cook grabbed a heavy ladle and swung it at a server's head, meaning to strike him. The server dodged, and the ladle instead struck a dishwasher who was passing behind the server, splitting her lip. The dishwasher sued the cook for battery, and the cook insisted he had no quarrel with the dishwasher and never meant to harm her.
Is the dishwasher likely to prevail on her battery claim?
Aiming to punch a man during a parking-lot dispute, a driver threw a punch at his face. The man stepped back and the punch missed him entirely, touching no one. The man's young daughter, standing a few feet away, watched the swing and was so frightened and shaken that she suffered severe and lasting emotional distress. The daughter sued the driver for intentional infliction of emotional distress, arguing that the driver's intent to strike her father should carry over to her claim.
Is the daughter likely to prevail on her emotional-distress claim under transferred intent?
Wanting to scare a neighbor into staying off a shared path, a homeowner picked up a large rock and hurled it toward the neighbor, intending to make the neighbor flinch but not to hit him. The rock flew past the neighbor and crashed down onto a third person's flowerbed across the lane, coming to rest on that person's land. The landowner whose flowerbed the rock entered sued the homeowner for trespass to land, and the homeowner argued he had only been trying to frighten the neighbor.
Is the landowner likely to prevail on the trespass-to-land claim?