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Hey everybody, in this episode, let's talk about a case you will probably read in your torts class. It's Wagner, the state of Utah. Let's talk about it.

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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school. Let's get started.

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So Wagner is a case that you're going to probably read in your torts class. It is probably towards the beginning of the class in the section where you're talking about intentional torts. And it is a case that is going to help you understand more what it means for someone to have the requisite intent to have committed an intentional tort against another person. So the intent element that you're learning about could apply to any number of intentional torts that you're going to be discussing on your exam. Could be battery, assault, false imprisonment. This case is going to help us understand what it means for a tort feaser, the person who allegedly committed a tort, to have the requisite intent to be held liable for an intentional tort. So Wagner versus State of Utah. So this was a 2005 case decided by the Utah Supreme Court. The case began in the trial court with a personal injury. It's a personal injury case. Tracy and Robert Wagner are the plaintiffs, and they are suing, in this case, the state of Utah, and specifically its Department of Human Services and a development center for people with cognitive disabilities. So the Wagners have some kind of case related to some kind of injuries against the Department of Human Services and this development center that they run in Utah. So after the case was filed, the state, the defendants, moved to dismiss the case under Rule 12B6. What they were saying, the defendants in the case was hey, trial court, even if you take all the Wagner's allegations as true, they cannot state any claim at all. They can't win any case. There's something defective about their allegations that means that even if they prove everything that they've alleged in their lawsuit, they cannot succeed. So trial court, you should dismiss this case. You should not have it go through discovery. You should not have it go all the way to trial. You should just dismiss it. The trial court granted that motion. It dismissed the case. It threw out the Wagner's lawsuit. The Wagners appealed the case all the way up to the Utah Supreme Court. What did the Utah Supreme Court do? They affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the case. They said, yep, the trial court was right to dismiss this case for the reasons that we will talk about in this podcast episode. So what are the facts of the Wagner case? Well, first of all, just know that in a 12 B6 motion, like what the state defendants filed, the facts that we're talking about come from the lawsuit that the plaintiffs filed only. We assume that those facts are true. We read them in a light most favorable to the Wagners as the non-moving party. We do not consider any evidence or testimony being submitted by the defendants, the state at this early stage. No, all we're doing is looking at the Wagner's lawsuit and asking if the Wagners are able to prove all these allegations, can they make some kind of legal claim? So, what were those allegations in the lawsuit? Well, according to the Wagners, Tracy Wagner was out and about one day and she was at a Kmart. If you don't live near a Kmart, it's a department store like a Walmart. She's standing in a customer service line. As she is standing there, she is attacked from behind by a man named Sam Geese. Now, I haven't mentioned Sam yet. He's not one of the parties to this case, but Sam was a man with a mental disability. And he was a patient of the defendant, Utah State Development Center. Sam grabbed Tracy by the hair, threw her to the ground, and injured her. Now, employees were there of the Utah State Development Center. They took Sam Geese to this Kmart and they took him there intentionally as part of his treatment. They were there to supervise him. Essentially, they were getting Sam out into the world for the day. They took him to the Kmart. And in that customer service line, Sam grabbed Tracy and injured her. According to the lawsuit, according to the Wagner's allegations, Sam had a history of violent conduct, and he was dangerous to the public if not properly supervised. So the Wagners sued the Utah State Development Center for failing to properly supervise the activities of geese. They essentially sued the state of Utah and said, hey, you all were negligent in failing to properly supervise this man geese. You had a responsibility to do that, and you failed to do that, and I was injured. Now wait a second. Let's pause, let's pause for a minute. The Wagners are alleging that the Utah State Development Center was negligent because their employees failed to supervise geese. Negligence is not an intentional tort. Intentional torts are battery, false imprisonment, assault. Negligence doesn't involve any intent. The Wagners were not alleging an intentional tort against USDC, against the Utah State Development Center. So how is it that this case is about intent? We'll get there. Hang on. It is about intent, I promise you. So what happened next? Well, after the Wagners filed this negligence lawsuit against Utah and the State Development Center, those defendants moved to dismiss. And what they said in their motion to dismiss was, hey court, look at the Wagner's allegations. And Court, we want you to consider that all of those allegations are true. Everything the Wagners allege is accurate and it's what happened. But if you assume all that is true, the Wagners cannot win their negligence case. Why? Well, because the Wagners are alleging injuries that arose out of a battery. And Utah and its government entities are immune from any lawsuits that arise out of a battery. Let me say that again. Utah, its government agencies are immune from any kind of lawsuits that arise out of a battery. Even if the Wagners position their case as a negligence claim. It arises out of a battery, and that's what the government is immune from. The state won that motion. The trial court dismissed the case. The Wagners appealed and it went up to the Utah Supreme Court. Now, one of the reasons this case is so confusing to a first-year law student is you probably haven't thought too much about the doctrine of immunity. And the purpose of why this case is in your textbook and how you'll use it on an issue spot or exam answer may be clouded a little bit and convoluted to understand because the case involves immunity. And that's not something you've thought about too much. So let's understand what immunity is just a little bit so we can better understand what is going on in this case. The concept of state immunity, of government immunity, is this. US states have decided that they will generally be immune from negligence suits due to the acts of their employees. Think about it. States control the judicial system. Governments say, hey, taxpayers are funding our defense of lawsuits, our settlements. We don't think it's fair necessarily for the state to be able to be liable for negligence suits due to the acts of our employees. So that's the general immunity that states apply to themselves. However, the state of Utah waives that immunity for negligent acts of employees. So Utah has this general immunity rule, but the state and its law in Utah says, hey, we're going to go ahead and waive the immunity. If our employees were negligent, you can sue us for that. We waive it. However, there's an exception. There's a third layer to this. The state of Utah says that look, even though we waive that immunity for negligent suits, if your lawsuit against Utah arises out of an assault, a battery, or a false imprisonment, we do not waive immunity. Those suits cannot be brought. Now, why would Utah do that? Why do they have this rule and this exception and then this exception to the exception? Well, it might make sense that the state says, look, if one of our employees is negligent towards you, we believe you should be able to recover against the state for that. If one of our workers is negligent, however, if one of our workers commits an intentional tort, like assault, battery, false imprisonment, we're not waiving immunity. Why is that? It's unfair for us to be responsible for the intentional torts of one of our employees. We don't want our employees committing any kind of intentional tort. And so, as an exception to our waiver, the state is saying we have a rule and a law that says the state is not going to be liable for those intentional acts. Now, a plaintiff who gets injured could go ahead and maybe sue the individual employees, maybe or maybe not. There's some immunity that applies to them. However, those suits, those suits that arise out of an intentional tort cannot be brought. Okay, so back to what the state was saying in its motion to dismiss in the trial court. What the state is saying, look, is Judge, we've got this negligence case against the state saying that we negligently failed to supervise Sam Geese. But Judge, that case arises out of a battery committed by geese. And because the case arises out of a battery, it falls under an exception to the waiver of immunity because remember, the state has said we will not be liable for battery committed by people. We're not going to be liable for that. The state waived immunity, but not for cases arising out of intentional torts. And what the state said was look, geese committed an intentional tort. Therefore, it falls into that exception to our waiver of immunity, and the state cannot be liable. So the key question, the key legal issue for the Utah Supreme Court was, was geese's attack a battery or not? If it was a battery, then the state was immune from a lawsuit over that act. If it was not a battery, then the Wagner's negligence suit can go on because the case didn't arise out of any kind of battery. So whether the attack was a battery or not was the key question here. Now you might say, well, wait a minute, Sam Geese clearly injured her. He clearly acted and assaulted her. Isn't that a battery? Isn't that a battery? So doesn't it fall under the exception to waiver such that this case cannot be brought? Well, what the Wagners said in response to the demotion to dismiss was look, whether someone's act is a battery depends on whether they had the requisite intent to commit a battery. The Wagner said Geese's act of pulling on Tracy's hair, pulling her to the ground was not a battery because Mr. Geese was mentally incompetent and could not intend harm or offense through his deliberate contact. They said because of his mental state, he could not have the requisite intent to commit a battery, therefore it was not a battery, therefore the state's waiver of immunity for negligence suit applies. Now the state, in their motion to dismiss and arguing for dismissal, said Mr. Geese's act was a battery. He intended to make contact with Miss Wagner. What the state said was, look, for us to show that he had intent, we don't need to show that Geese intended to harm her. What matters is, did he intend that contact? So the court had to decide what does it mean to have intent such that a party committed an intentional tort? And did Mr. Geese have that intent based on what was being alleged on the face of the Wagner's complaint? Well, the court said that for a defendant to be guilty of a battery, they only needed to have intended to make contact. The contact must have been deliberate and it must have been offensive. The actor, the tortfeaser, the defendant in a case, does not need to have intended that the contact was harmful or offensive in order to commit a battery so long as he deliberately made the contact that was harmful and offensive. So intent isn't about the consequence that the tortfeaser intended. What matters is the intent to cause contact when acting. So if the alleged tortfeaser knows that their act is substantially certain to create that harmful or offensive contact, they've committed an intentional tort. What matters is the intent to make contact, not an intent to cause harm, injury, or some kind of offense through the contact. And the court gives some great examples of that in various cases where parties intended to make contact and therefore committed a battery, but they may not have intended to cause some kind of harmful result. We've gone over what the legal rules are. How do those apply to the Wagner's lawsuit? How did the Utah Supreme Court apply them in its opinion? Well, the Utah Supreme Court looked at the Wagner's allegations in their lawsuit. That's what a court does when faced with the 12 B6 motion. Based on those allegations, the Wagners claimed that Geese intended to make contact with Miss Wagner that was harmful or offensive. Therefore, Geese's conduct was a battery, and it fell under the state's exception to the waiver of immunity. Therefore, the Wagners could not bring their case against the state. It was barred by the immunity statute because Geese's conduct was a battery, as alleged by the Wagners. It did not matter if, as the Wagners argued, Geese did not realize that his conduct would be harmful or offensive. Ultimately, the Wagners could not get around the immunity law in Washington. Their case arose out of a battery by Geese based on their own allegations. So we've gone over the rules that you need to learn for your exam in torts. How could you write those rules succinctly in an outline? You may have a rule statement in your outline of your exam answer that we're working on that sounds like this. The intent required to commit an intentional tort is the intent to make contact, not an intent to harm, injure, or offend through that contact. Let's talk and think about when you might go to that part of your outline and apply that rule. If you see a potential intentional tort in the fact pattern that your professor gives you on the exam, but you're thinking about one of those defendants, and it might be someone who may not have intended to cause harm by their actions, the rules from this case might come into play. So think about a surgeon who operates on the wrong body part. Well, they didn't intend to cause harm, but they did intend the act. Think about someone like Geese who may not be fully mentally competent and may not understand the consequences of their actions at the time. In that instance, they may argue, well, I'm not liable for this battery. I'm not liable for this assault. But the rule from this case would come into play and say that no, you did have the requisite intent so long as you intended to make a harmful or offensive contact. It doesn't matter what you intended about the results and the consequences of your action. You don't need to intend that the results or consequences be harmful or offensive. So why is it that this case can be kind of a headache to understand and long to read? Probably because the legal rules that you need for your torts exam are buried in this whole discussion about immunity. That probably isn't going to be important for your torts exam unless you read a whole chapter about immunity, unless your professor harps on immunity. If that's the case, if you think it could be an issue for your torts class, maybe make a note of that in your outline. When you're talking about intentional torts, look for state defendants. Look for government defendants. Because if you have a government employee or institution like this who might be a defendant, you could have an immunity issue. But that's probably not why your professor is having you read this case. Your professor is probably having you read it for the simple proposition about what constitutes an intentional tort. So I hope this helped you understand the Wagner case a little bit better and cut through some of that ambiguity that happens because of the convolutedness of having to deal with this case under the immunity lens. But don't worry about that so much when it comes to understanding what an intentional tort is. That is why this case has important legal rules for your exam and what you should probably use it for in your exam answer. I hope that's helpful. We'll see you next time.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law one step at a time.