Vosburg v. Putney

Vosburg v. Putney, 80 Wis. 523, 50 N.W. 403 (Wisc. 1891), was an American torts case that helped establish the scope of liability in a battery. The case involved an incident that occurred on February 20, 1889, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. A 14-year-old boy, Andrew Vosburg, was kicked in his upper shin by an 11-year-old boy, George Putney, while the two were in their schoolhouse's classroom. Unbeknownst to Putney, Vosburg had previously injured his knee, and after the incident he developed a serious infection in the area that required physicians to drain pus and excise bone, and left him with a weakness in his leg for the rest of his life. The verdict of the lawsuit's first trial was set aside, and in the second trial the jury awarded Vosburg $2500 in compensatory damages.

The case has been labeled as "one of the most studied cases in American law" after its decision in 1891. The trial found that Putney never intended to cause Vosburg any harm, and the case is often studied in American law schools as an example of the role of intent in tort cases. The case came three times before the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, and the court's opinions, the second one in particular, were soon selected for coursebooks on Damages and Torts and became well known to generations of students, teachers and scholars of law. Even a century later, the case "continues to stimulate thinking about the judicial process, legal doctrine and liability theory."