Legal Question in Personal Injury in Virginia

Would not be any different (in my opinion) from any other situation in which you "accidentally and minimally" inflicted damages on someone else's property.

It's called the tort of negligence and, yes, you could be liable, assuming

no contributory negligence on the part of the alleged victim.

I think this is right "on the line" between what is liability and what is not.

Legally, you are NOT responsible just because some damage results.

You are legally responsible if:

1) You INTENTIONALLY act to cause damage

or

2) You act with such a degree of NEGLIGENCE that the resulting harm can be blamed on you.

Not every action that produces damge or injury makes you legally liable.

However, an "intentional" tort does not necessarily mean that I INTENDED for injury to result.

If I intentionally throw a softball at a house, I might not intend for the window to be broken, but I intended to hit the house, so I am on the hook for whatever damage resulted.

So INTENDING an action that causes harm is enough. INTENDING to cause harm is NOT necessary.

SO in the very common situation of a car door in a parking lot, there are two possibilities:

1) I swing the door open intentionally and hit the car next to me. I INTENDED to swing the door open. I did not intend for it to cause damage. But I acted intentionally.

2) I open the door, turn and pick up my shopping bags. While I am picking up the bags, the door swings open without me and hits the car next to me.

Is that negligence?

This is close to the line.

So who decides?

Well, normally a jury would decide (or the judge if there is no jury). (A judge might throw out the case if it is not remotely posisble that negligence applies.)

So is this close enough to be negligence?

Maybe, maybe not. It woudl be in the eyes of the beholder. And it woudl depend on exactly what happened.

However, I think that msot people on a jury would say that you are responsible for the damage.

Me, I think that if you open the door and without your awareness, the door continues swinging and hits the car next to me, this is not something I can typically control, and therefore it is not negligent.

Often, I would need 3 or 4 hands to be able to juggle the door and the shoping bags and be able to control everything.