Assault and Battery

Although most typically in the personal injury realm, an incident occurs due to a party’s negligence, or failure to live up to the duty of care, sometimes a person gets injured because of another party’s intentional acts such as assault and battery.  In these cases, the at fault party may be held criminally liable, but a civil case may also be brought against the at fault party, as well as a business or person who allowed this conduct to occur. 

Cases involving intentional acts such as punching/kicking, assaults, stabbings, or shootings may arise in situations such as the following: 

• A rideshare driver assaults a customer; 
• A person gets stabbed during a fight at a bar; 
• A shooting at a school or business; 

In order to bring a civil action, the situation must be carefully analyzed to ascertain who is truly at fault. In the three examples above, not only could the aggressive actor be a potential defendant, but other persons and entities could be as well: 

• The rideshare company for failing to run proper checks before hiring a driver who has a history of assaulting people;
• The bar for failing to provide adequate security measures or by failing to stop the stabbing when the aggressor had previously made threats that the bar knew about; 
• The school or business for failing to prevent a foreseeable shooting, or for employing a person whom the school should have known could pose a threat to others.

If you or a loved one has been injured at the hands of someone else’s intentional acts, it is important to engage an attorney who can help you navigate these claims. The attorneys at KTL have encountered and successfully litigated several cases involving assault and battery claims.