Bettel v. Yim 20 O.R. (2d) 617 is a famous Canadian tort case from Ontario. The Court established that an individual is liable for all harm that flows from his or her conduct even where the harm was not intended.

Two young men, Bettel and a friend, threw lighted matches into Yim's store, setting fire to a bag of charcoal. Yim ran out of his store, grabbed Bettel, and shook him in an attempt to get Bettel to confess. While shaking him Yim accidentally head-butted Bettel in the nose causing Bettel serious injury.

The Court held that Yim was liable for the consequences of his action. Citing the rule of transferred intent, the judge stated that the foreseeability

Proximate cause

In the law, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to a legally recognizable injury to be held the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law, cause-in-fact and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is determined by the "but-for" test: but for the action, the result...

 rule for negligence

Negligence

Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...

 does not apply to intentional tort

Intentional tort

An intentional tort is a category of torts that describes a civil wrong resulting from an intentional act on the part of the tortfeasor. The term negligence, on the other hand, pertains to a tort that simply results from the failure of the tortfeasor to take sufficient care in fulfilling a duty...

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