In a message dated 99-02-05 11:43:58 EST, Kathy Dettwyler wrote:

<< Will someone PLEASE explain this to me??  Touching someone is not battery.
 Not in any circumstance that I am aware of.  As I posted earlier, in sexual
 harrassment cases, touching -- even the kind that hurts a person -- is FINE
 until/unless the person specifically tells you not to.  How does that square
 with the insistence that any kind of touching is battery??  Can I accuse
 someone of battery who touches me with their arm on my arm in a crowded
 elevator?  Can I accuse someone of battery who taps me on the shoulder?
 Come on folks!
  >>

First of all battery is a crime, not a tort -- that is, you press criminal
charges with the cooperation of prosecuting authorities, rather than suing in
civil court.  For crimes in the US at least you need "mens rea" -- "bad mind"
-- aka intent of some kind.  In contrast a tort -- like sexual harrassment
doesn't necessarily require this; some just require negligence, some not even
that.  Also the standard of proof is much weaker in civil matters
("preponderance of the evidence," which is supposed to mean 51%, rather than
"proof beyond a reasonable doubt").

So the woman Kathy described who was hassled by her strangler's lawyer might
or might not have been able to persuade a jury to find damages against the
jerk for the tort of sexual harrassment.   She also, separately, might or
might not have been able to persuade a prosecutor to try the guy for battery
-- I'd have personally said go for the latter, if you could talk your local
D.A. into it.   But one doesn't require the other, and they have totally
separate rules.  (not to mention different rules for each in every
jurisdiction, even within the US -- and apologies to all the non-US
lactnetters to whom this must be interminable...).

Lawyers as a class are splitters, not lumpers -- KD, your research comparing
humans to our primate cousins suggests to me that maybe you have the opposite
of those two scholarly temperaments?  Myself, I am a lumper, but I live with
splitters (mostly lawyers) and have learned to speak their exotic tongue ;-).

Elisheva Urbas, NYC
(I feel like the buttoned-up white librarian in the old movie "Airplane" who
helpfully tells the stewardess, "Why yes, I speak jive.")