## Facts

- A seven-year-old boy, Maurice Waters, was injured when another minor, Timothy Blackshear, placed a firecracker in Waters’s left sneaker and lit it.
- Before the incident, Blackshear had been lighting firecrackers for about ten minutes by tossing them to the ground and watching them ignite and spin.
- Waters sustained burn injuries from the explosion.
- Waters (by his mother) and his mother individually sought recovery solely on a negligence theory against Blackshear.

## Issues

1. Whether placing and lighting a firecracker in another child’s sneaker could, on the evidence, reasonably be treated as negligence rather than intentional conduct.
2. Whether judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) was proper where the jury found negligence but the trial court concluded the evidence showed only an intentional tort (battery).

## Decision

- The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs after being instructed that recovery was allowed only if the act was not intentional and was negligent.
- The trial judge granted the defendant’s motion for JNOV, concluding the evidence showed intentional, not negligent, conduct.
- The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the JNOV for the defendant.
- The court held the only permissible characterization of the conduct was an intentional battery; the negligence verdict therefore could not stand.

## Legal Principles

- Intentional conduct and negligent conduct are mutually exclusive for liability analysis; conduct that is intentional cannot be recast as negligence.
- Battery occurs when an actor intends to cause harmful or offensive contact (or imminent apprehension of it) and harmful contact directly or indirectly results.
- Intent for battery includes acting with knowledge to a substantial certainty that harmful or offensive contact will result; the actor need not intend the precise extent of the resulting injury.
- A defendant’s status as a minor does not defeat intent where the child’s age, experience, and intelligence support that the child would understand the harmful nature of the act.
- When plaintiffs proceed solely on negligence and the evidence supports only an intentional tort, a negligence verdict is unsupported and JNOV is appropriate.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed judgment for the defendant because the undisputed evidence showed an intentional battery—placing and lighting a firecracker in a child’s shoe—so the plaintiffs could not recover on their exclusively pleaded and tried negligence theory.


Waters v. Blackshear, 412 Mass. 589, 591 N.E.2d 184 (1992)