Screwed up!

Here's a report on a case where one member of a couple sued the other for injuries that resulted during consensual sex.

The plaintiff and the defendant were in a long-term committed relationship. Early in the morning of September 24, 1994, they were engaged in consensual sexual intercourse....Shortly after taking this new position, the defendant landed awkwardly on the plaintiff, thereby causing him to suffer a penile fracture.

The court went on to say that reckless sexual conduct — involving "voluntary taking of risk" and "indifference to consequences" — might be actionable, but merely negligent (i.e., careless) conduct in which a defendant simply "did not think about possible injury to the plaintiff" is not. <snip> ...the prospect of litigation involving experts on how reasonable people have sex (sexologists? prostitutes?), debates about how sexually expert we should expect the reasonable person to be (especially in the throes of passion), attempts to reconstruct exactly who moved how and why, and jury verdicts about how the Reasonable Sexual Partner would have had Reasonable Sex boggle the mind. And, hey, if we impose legal duties on people, shouldn't sex ed class teach students how to properly discharge their duties?