Synthesis Practice After carefully reading this case excerpt below, practice your skills by: 1. Writing out a single sentence explaining the intent necessary for battery in this jurisdiction. 2. Writing out a single sentence setting out the rule for battery as a whole. Excerpt from Villa v. Derouen, 614 So.2d 714, 715-718 (La. App. Ct. 1993): A civil battery has been defined by the Louisiana Supreme Court in Caudle v. Betts, 512 So.2d 389, 391 (La.1987) as, "[a] harmful or offensive contact with a person, resulting from an act intended to cause the plaintiff to suffer such a contact...." (Citations omitted.) The Louisiana Supreme Court in Caudle, supra, at page 391, continued by stating: "The intention need not be malicious nor need it be an intention to inflict actual damage. It is sufficient if the actor intends to inflict either a harmful or offensive contact without the other's consent. (Citations omitted.) .... "The element of personal indignity involved always has been given considerable weight. Consequently, the defendant is liable not only for contacts that do actual physical harm, but also for those relatively trivial ones which are merely offensive and insulting. (Citations omitted.) The intent with which tort liability is concerned is not necessarily a hostile intent, or a desire to do any harm. Restatement (Second) of Torts, American Law Institute 13 (comment e) (1965). Rather it is an intent to bring about a result which will invade the interests of another in a way that the law forbids. The defendant may be liable although intending nothing more than a good-natured practical joke, or honestly believing that the act would not injure the plaintiff, or even though seeking the plaintiff's own good." (Citations omitted.) Pursuant to this jurisprudence, we must determine whether Derouen committed a battery against Villa. Did Villa suffer an offensive contact which resulted from an act by Derouen which was intended to cause that offensive contact? Or as stated by Bazley, supra, at page 481, did Derouen entertain "a desire to bring about the consequences that followed", or did Derouen believe "that the result was substantially certain to follow," thereby characterizing his act of spraying Villa as intentional? There is a distinction between an intentional act which causes an intentional injury and an intentional act which causes an unintentional injury. To constitute a battery, Derouen need only intend that the oxygen he sprayed toward the plaintiff come into contact with Villa, or have the knowledge that this contact was substantially certain to occur. The physical results or consequences which must be desired or known to a substantial certainty in order to rise to the level of an intentional tort, refer to the requirements of the particular intentional tort alleged. In this case, wherein Villa has alleged a battery, the harmful or offensive contact and not the resulting injury is the physical result which must be intended.