Halloween seems to make people do things they might not otherwise do. The season of Halloween has created many interesting legal cases, enough to fill a book and cover lots of law school course topics.
Here are just a few:
A neighborhood brawl over a Halloween yard decoration depicting a graveyard with tombstones — with the neighbors’ names on them. (Constitutional First Amendment, Free Speech issue.)
A homeowner sells a house without disclosing it is infamously haunted. (Contract Law issue, and state real estate disclosure law).
Claims of injuries due to being frightened in a haunted house (Tort law issue.)
The original Candyman killer in Texas who used poison candy to get an insurance payout on his son (Criminal Law issue.)
These are examples of cases that cover four, first year law courses. The cases that happen around Halloween frivolity span every course that a law student would take in their first year of law school.
This seemed like a challenge so I wrote the book, named as you might expect, Halloween Law.
Halloween Law is organized like the first year of law school, with chapters on each course you take as a first year law student: Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Contract Law, Tort Law, and more. A few upper level courses are added for those who want more. Cases also cover advanced courses like education law, intellectual property (Halloween costumes), local government law (ordinances on curfews) and more.
Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Halloween torts:
Halloween Tort Law
Halloween is full of tarts, tortes and torts. Here, the Halloween Tort Law discussion is essential because there are a lot of them.
What is a tort?
A tort is a civil wrong that is either intentional or unintentional, but may come from the same act as a criminal case (Remember the O.J. Simpson criminal case and then the civil case?). There are two categories of torts. The intentional torts are committed with – intent and there are five general ones: assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and trespass. The unintentional torts include negligence and nuisance.
Each of these torts has a set of “elements” which all must be met in order to be proven in court. Tort law is state law, not federal law but each state has the same basic elements for proving a tort. Mainly they differ in the way they determine liability. In civil cases the parties are called the plaintiff which is the party suing or claiming to be injured and the defendant is the one who acted and against whom the case is brought. The burden to prove these elements is on the accuser or the plaintiff. (Note that it is the complainant in criminal law, rather than the plaintiff, that begins a legal action, but it is the state in criminal law not the individual bringing the case.)
Not to keep you in the dark any longer, here are the elements of the five general intentional torts:
Assault has three elements, intent will always be one of the elements in the intentional torts, the second is apprehension of harm and the third is causation.
Battery has three elements. First, an intent to commit a harmful touching; second, the action results in an actual offensive contact; and three, there is causation between the act and the touching.
False imprisonment has four elements. First, intent to confine the plaintiff; second an actual confinement preventing the plaintiff from leaving; third, a causal link; and four, an awareness of the confinement. The law of torts across the nation has been summarized and distilled into a general set of principles to help understand torts, called the restatement. The Restatement (2nd) of Torts, §31, defines false imprisonment:
An actor is subject to liability to another for false imprisonment if:
(a) he acts intending to confine the other or a third person within boundaries fixed by the actor, and;
(b) his act directly or indirectly results in such a confinement of the other, and
(c) the other is conscious of the confinement or is harmed by it.
Trespass to land also includes the element of intent, but it is a general intent of actually being on the land, perhaps without knowing one is trespassing. The Restatement (2nd) of Torts, section 329, states: A trespasser is a person who enters or remains upon land in the possession of another without a privilege to do so created by the possessor's consent or otherwise.
There are several other kinds of trespass, too.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress has four elements: 1.intent to cause or reckless disregard or the probability of causing emotional distress; 2. outrageous conduct by the defendant; 3. Actual damages or suffering; and 4. Causation of the emotional distress by the plaintiff’s outrageous conduct.
The unintentional torts, lack the common element of intent, but the general concept is that although intent may not be present, the extent of the recklessness, carelessness or neglect may give rise to a wrong that should be compensated because of these actions. Negligence and product liability are unintentional torts.
These unintentional torts also have elements which must all be proven.
For negligence, first, there must be a duty to the plaintiff; second that duty must have been breached by the defendant; third, there must be a link between the injuries and the acts of the defendant, called “proximate cause” and then fourth, the plaintiff suffered damages as a result of all of the above.
There are some defenses like assumption of risk, attractive nuisance and consent which arise in Halloween Tort Law which can help a defendant.
Product liability is the result of a product that had either a design defect, a manufacturing defect or a marketing defect that rendered it strictly liable for the harm it caused. The strict liability standard means that it does not matter how careful the manufacturer was in the process, the mere production of it makes the manufacturer strictly liable for the harm.
Defenses to product liability could be statutorily created or if the product is used in a way that was clearly not intended.
Negligence in Haunted Houses and Corn Mazes
Haunted Houses are particularly good places to have accidents --- they need to be dark so that patrons cannot see and they are filled with scary actors and situations which may cause reactions that result in self-injury or unintentional injuries. The people who work as the actors can also be injured.
A negligence case begins with the question of duty. Does the haunted house owner owe a duty to the patron? If so, what is that duty? The patron rightfully expects not to be faced with an unreasonable danger, but they do expect to have a frightening experience. In fact, they are paying to be frightened in a haunted house, which alters the normal duty “not to scare” another. The court described this “modified duty” on Halloween:
On any other evening, presenting a frightening or threatening visage might be a violation of a general duty not to scare others. But on Halloween at trick-or-treat time, that duty is modified. Our society encourages children to transform themselves into witches, demons, and ghosts, and play a game of threatening neighbors into giving them candy.
Bouton v. Allstate Ins. Co., 491 So. 2d 56, 59 (La. Ct. App. 1986).
The court has held that haunted houses are typically not unreasonable risks. Patrons who enter a haunted house assume the risk of things that typically happen in a haunted house, including their own actions when they are frightened.
In Durman (La. App. Ct.), a chainsaw actor ran after a patron of a corn maze, who heard the chainsaw and ran, slipped in the mud and was injured, but the court held the mud was part of being in a corn maze. The court said, “Accordingly, we find that no duty was owed by the Billingses to Mrs. Durmon in this case to warn or protect her from her reaction to being frightened by “Jason,” an experience she expected to have and for which she paid an additional admission fee.” In Mays v. Gretna (La.App., 5th Cir.1996) a patron was injured who ran into a brick wall after being frightened; and in Bonanno v. Continental, where a devil frightened patrons their assumption of that risk of being frightened was a complete defense to a negligence case against the haunted houses. In all three cases, the courts held that these were not unreasonable risks and there was no duty to guard against fright resulting from a haunted house, because after all, that is what patrons paid for.
In Policeman's Benefit Association, the security guard shoved a patron against the wall, injuring them, which was not a risk the patron had assumed. The only question was whether the act had been reckless to determine whether the insurance company would defend the guard. In Powell, a patron claimed they suffered a mental disability as a result of a blow to the head they received in the haunted house. In Seipp (NC), a patron was injured while attending a haunted house that was owned by the school district, and because the school district had not properly completed the requirements to rent the facility to the organization, the court did not grant its usual sovereign immunity making the school liable for the patron’s injuries.
The court has held that haunted house establishments do not owe a duty to protect patrons from the traffic after they leave the house. In Arthur (La.), a patron was injured in traffic after leaving the haunted house and the court held that the haunted house had no duty to patrons after they left the house and so no negligence. Also, in Galan (La), a patron was injured while leaving the haunted house and the court held there was no breach of duty.
However, where a haunted house did not have a firefighter at a slide to assist a patron who was injured on a slide in the haunted house, the court held the haunted house had breached its duty to protect its patrons from unreasonable risks. The court found negligence. Burton v. Carroll Co. (Tenn.). In Holman (Ill.), a grandma was visiting a Halloween display in the Illinois State Museum with her grandson and the lights were out when she fell over some chairs in the corner of the room. It was distinguishable from the other cases where there is no duty “not to scare” because here, the haunted house had been unreasonable with the pile of chairs in a corner which presented an unreasonable risk and the haunted house had a duty to protect the patrons from unreasonable risks. The court held the house was negligent and they breached their duty of reasonable care to the grandma.
Some states require a contributory negligence formulation where if the patron contributed to the negligence they may have no recovery or they may have a proportionate recover depending on the percentage of the negligence the court attributes to them. This is state law which varies from state to state.
If you want to treat yourself to the book, you can look inside or buy the book here Halloween Law .
If you want the full experience of Halloween Law School, the video series can be found here Halloween Law School . Here’s what you might learn: What might happen if someone sold a house to you and you didn't know that it was haunted? Or what if your neighbor decided to write your epitaph on a tombstone that he used for a Halloween yard decoration? Or what if someone took the vampire character too far in actually drinking blood from a victim? What if you got so frightened in a haunted house party that you broke your leg when you tried to escape? All of these fascinating questions span subject areas of law which will earn you graduation from Halloween Law School if you make it through the course.
If you dare to attend Halloween Law School, you will get a sense of what it takes to go to the first year of law school (in the U.S.). Hogwarts might teach you to be a wizard, but the Halloween Law School course will prepare you for the scariest night of the year. You will learn some legaleze along the way, and learn a bit about a lawyer's brain without ever having to take it out! This course will conjure up real law cases in every subject of the first year of law school for you and leave you frightfully ready to deal with any case from the crypt.
Happy Halloween.
Paid subscribers receive a free ticket to the Halloween Law School video series.