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.
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.”
