Opinion ID: 2576436
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Harmful or Offensive Contact at Law

Text: ¶ 51 A harmful or offensive contact is simply one to which the recipient of the contact has not consented either directly or by implication. Prosser, supra, § 9, at 41-42. Under this definition, harmful or offensive contact is not limited to that which is medically injurious or perpetrated with the intent to cause some form of psychological or physical injury. Instead, it includes all physical contacts that the individual either expressly communicates are unwanted, or those contacts to which no reasonable person would consent. ¶ 52 What is not included in this definition are the uncommunicated idiosyncratic preferences of individuals not to be touched in ways considered normal and customary in our culture. Instead, the law assumes consent to contacts according to the usages of decent society, and unless an individual expressly states that he does not want to shake hands, for example, someone who shakes his hand against his silent wishes has not committed a harmful or offensive contact. Id. § 9, at 42. ¶ 53 As Prosser notes in his analysis on the subject, in a crowded world, a certain amount of personal contact is inevitable, and must be accepted. Absent expression to the contrary, consent is assumed to all those ordinary contacts which are customary and reasonably necessary to the common intercourse of life. Id. Among the contacts Prosser noted as part of this common intercourse were: a tap on the shoulder, a friendly grasp of the arm, and a casual jostling to make a passage. Id. Thus, the tort of battery seeks to strike a balance between preserving the bodily integrity of others and recognizing and accommodating the realities of our physical world. ¶ 54 Because the law defines harmful and offensive with reference to the mores of polite society, and protects against invasions of bodily integrity perpetrated outside those bounds, whether consent is assumed also depends upon who is making the contact. For example, it seems clear that the usages of a decent society and polite manners are in nowise offended when a baby reaches out to perform the non-medically injurious act of stroking the hair of a nearby stranger. Such encounters with babies are customary . . . in the course of life. Id. § 9, at 42. ¶ 55 Thus, we can include this type of contact from babies in the category of contacts for which we are assumed to have consented. A grown man, on the other hand, perpetrating the same act for equally complimentary reasons, would not enjoy the same privilege, for his behavior would not be considered by reasonable people to be a customary contact in decent society to which members consent. ¶ 56 The Wagners argue that Mr. Giese has the mental age of a small infant, and should be held no more accountable for his acts than a child of his mental age would. We disagree with the Wagners' legal conclusion. ¶ 57 As already explained, the law of torts, and battery in particular, was designed to protect people from unacceptable invasions of bodily integrity. Taking into account the realities of our physical world, and the physical contacts that are not only inevitable, but are part of our cultural customs, there are limits to the physical contacts from which the law will protect us. The law assumes consent as to all regular and culturally acceptable contacts. Certain contacts from very young children fall into this category primarily because most contacts from very young children are not medically injurious given their relative physical weakness and their standing in our society. ¶ 58 Not so with mentally handicapped adults. Even if the adult had the mental capacity of a small child, the difference in size and strength would make any attempt at an analogy between societal consent to a baby's contact and societal consent to attacks at the hand of such an adult wholly unreasonable. Clearly, society has not simply consented to violent contacts from the mentally handicapped. Under the Restatement, as long as a person, mentally handicapped or not, intended to touch the person of another, and the touch was a harmful or offensive one at law, he has committed a battery, and the price of the injuries he inflicted must be paid out of his, or his caretaker's, pockets. ¶ 59 Further, aside from this practical difference, there is a legal one as well. While the Restatement does provide that [i]f an actor is a child, his mental deficiency is taken into account, Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283B cmt. a, it grants no such exception for adults with the mental age of a child, instead clearly refusing to provide any allowance for the mentally handicapped to be free from liability for deliberate contacts that produce harm or offense. Id. § 283B cmt. c. ¶ 60 It does not matter that Mr. Giese may not have understood that Mrs. Wagner had not consented to the contact because it is not an element of the tort that the actor appreciate that the contact is unwanted. His mental incompetence may insulate him from criminal liability because the mental handicap may negate the mens rea requirement, but the same level of intent is not required for civil liability to attach. ¶ 61 The Wagners argue that Mr. Giese could not have committed any tort at all, either sounding in intentional torts or in negligence. However, if we were to adopt the rule urged by the Wagners, we would be contorting the law in order to provide recovery in this isolated instance. Yet, in doing so, we would be contracting the recoveries of all other plaintiffs victimized by insane or mentally handicapped individuals who are suing a non-State entity, and, in the process, limiting the protection of the bodily integrity of everyone. ¶ 62 The policy behind the Restatement definition of battery is to allow plaintiffs to recover from individuals who have caused them legal harm or injury, and to lay at the feet of the perpetrators the expense of their own conduct. Lawmakers have specifically declined to exempt mentally handicapped or insane individuals from the list of possible perpetrators of this tort for the express reason that they would prefer that the caretakers of such individuals feel heightened responsibility to ensure that their charges do not attack or otherwise injure members of the public. ¶ 63 We recognize that, in this instance, the retained immunity doctrine bars the caretakers of such a handicapped person from taking responsibility for the conduct of their charge. It is unfortunate, and perhaps it is improvident of the State to retain immunity in this area. But it is not our role as a judiciary to override the legislature in this matter; it is for us only to interpret and apply the law as it is. We will not limit the recoveries of all other plaintiffs similarly injured by defining the tort of battery in such a way as to make it far more burdensome for plaintiffs to satisfy its elements and recover, nor will we distort the plain language of the Restatement so as to elevate an actor's right to deliberately touch others at will over an individual's right to the preservation of her bodily integrity.