Torts Update!

It appears I misspoke- I'm only going to waste forty minutes in class today.

We're also covering damages!

Here are the three categories:

Nominal damages- received when you win a case that doesn't require damages. Trespass is generally the cardinal example- if someone walks across your land, they probably won't hurt anything, but you still have a legal right to sue. Generally, courts will award a dollar in such cases.

Compensatory damages- any category of damages that involves restitution to the victim. Loss or earnings, pain and suffering, medical bills, etc. fall under this umbrella. These can be quite large if the injury is severe and the victim is quite young- thereby increasing the potential earnings loss.

Punitive damages- awarded to punish a tortfeasor for outrageous conduct and deter him from such future conduct. Punitives are usually calculated by the earnings of the tortfeasor- you want to hit him hard enough to make him wince, but not to knock him unconscious, or simply have him brush it off.

Note: I think my professor is quite bright, and I am in no way criticizing his teaching method. He is performing as well as a cog in the teaching machine could. It is the traditional limits on his abilities I am bemoaning, as they standardize every teacher and force them to teach the same way. Every law school operates this way, so it's not quite far to blame the school either. It's just the way things are, I guess.

I just always feel like I'm continuously studying books on how to swim, but they won't let us near the water. Would you trust a lifeguard who had studied Life Saving at Harvard University, yet had never attempted to swim? I wouldn't.

Hopefully, I'll get some firsthand experience this summer.