Some commenters to a recent post on teaching tort law suggest that “intentional torts” very rarely come up in most lawyers’ practice. I think that’s true of some of the intentional torts that are often taught — assault, battery, false imprisonment, and the like.
But many torts that are indeed labeled “intentional torts” by tort law are tremendously important, including in everyday business litigation. Intentional interference with contract and intentional interfere with business relations routinely come up in business law cases. (Incidentally, what I think is the largest damages award and largest settlement in American history came in a tortious interference with contract case, Pennzoil v. Texaco — $7.53 billion in compensatory damages and $3 billion in punitive damages, eventually settled for $3 billion.) Fraud claims are likewise quite common in business litigation, though they are often also combined (in the alternative) with negligence-based negligent misrepresentation claims.
Nuisance, an intentional tort, is often litigated. Defamation claims are not uncommon in lawsuits by discharged employees, where a claim that the employer defamed the employee in relation to the termination — whether to coworkers, to future employers, or others — is often joined with various wrongful discharge claims. Ordinary libel claims are mostly the province of lawyers who specialize in “media law,” but trade libel and related claims aren’t uncommon in business disputes.
So it may well be that the traditional mainstays of the “intentional torts” section of the first-year Torts class are mostly included for intellectual or conceptual reasons, and aren’t that relevant to most practicing lawyers. (Trespass, for instance, helps introduce students to both the concept of intent and to strict liability components of supposedly non-strict-liability torts; and the necessity defense to trespass is a good place to introduce students to various kinds of policy arguments.) But the broader category labeled “intentional torts” in tort law includes many practically important claims.
UPDATE: Note that intent to harm, in the sense of a specific purpose to harm, is generally not required for an intentional tort. Rather, in tort law (as opposed to criminal law under the Model Penal Code and the statutes in many states) “intent” means either “the purpose” to cause a certain consequence, or “know[ledge] that the consequence is substantially certain to result.” That’s why nuisance, for instance, is an intentional tort even though many defendants in nuisance cases have no true purpose to bother their neighbors, but are just aware that the conduct is indeed bothering the neighbors.