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Jamie Sarkonak: How being in a toxic relationship can now get you sued

Supreme Court has recognized a civil action for 'coercive control,' but failed to draw a clear line between abuse and toxicity

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You can sue someone for inflicting mental distress, for causing you physical harm, and for causing you to fear that you’ll experience physical harm, which should cover all the bases of domestic violence. But on Friday, a majority of the Supreme Court went a step further and recognized a new way to sue for suffering mere indignity in a relationship.

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It’s called the “tort of intimate partner violence” — which isn’t exactly an accurate title, as it doesn’t actually require violence to have taken place. The essentials are just this: a relationship between the parties (past or present) must have existed, intentional abusive conduct by one against the other must have taken place, and that conduct must amount to “coercive control.”

Jamie Sarkonak: How being in a toxic relationship can now get you sued Back to video

Torts are civil wrongs for which you can sue, such as defamation and negligence. In the English legal system, they are typically created by judges, though there is a general expectation that judges should be conservative in inventing new torts. This is because society wouldn’t function if every single wrong a person could experience were given its own form of lawsuit, and the constant introduction of new forms of........

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