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🎧 EPISODE SUMMARY 🎧Trespass to land protects the possessor’s right to exclusive possession of real property. Liability generally requires intentional entry, causing a person or object to enter, remaining after permission expires, or failing to remove an object when required. The defendant need only intend the physical intrusion. Mistake about ownership ordinarily is not a defense.

Traditional trespass generally requires physical invasion. Actual damages are not ordinarily necessary, and nominal damages may vindicate the possessory right.

Trespass to chattels protects personal property against dispossession, use, or interference. Unlike technical trespass to land, the tort generally requires dispossession or measurable harm.

Conversion involves interference with personal property so serious that the defendant may be required to pay the item’s full value. Theft, destruction, unauthorized sale, prolonged possession, and refusal to return may constitute conversion. Minor interference generally points toward trespass to chattels.

Consent may be express, implied from conduct, or implied by law. It may be invalid because of fraud concerning an essential matter, duress, incapacity, or certain known mistakes. The defendant must remain within the scope of consent.

Self-defense permits reasonable and proportionate force when the defendant reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent harmful or offensive contact. Reasonable mistake may be protected. Retaliation is not. Deadly force generally requires threatened death or serious bodily harm.

Defense of others similarly permits reasonable intervention to protect another. Modern doctrine generally protects reasonable mistakes, while older alter-ego approaches may depend on the defended person’s actual rights.

Defense of property generally allows reasonable nondeadly force but not deadly force solely to protect property. Mechanical devices cannot ordinarily use greater force than the owner could use personally.

Recapture of chattels permits limited, prompt, reasonable force following wrongful dispossession. Voluntary transfers ordinarily must be challenged through legal process.

The shopkeeper’s privilege permits reasonable detention based on reasonable suspicion when the detention is conducted in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time.

Necessity permits interference with property to prevent greater harm. Public necessity ordinarily provides a complete privilege when action protects the public from widespread disaster. Private necessity ordinarily provides an incomplete privilege: the entry is lawful, but the defendant remains responsible for actual damage caused.

The key lesson for Tuesday is that proving the elements of an intentional tort is only the first half of the analysis. The student must next ask whether the defendant possessed a privilege and, if so, whether the defendant stayed within the privilege’s boundaries.

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