“Relax, it was only a joke.”
Those words are often heard after a prank goes wrong. A fake emergency, a staged robbery, a frightening costume, a false story about a loved one, or even a carefully planned “harmless” scare may seem funny to the person behind it.
But what happens when the person being pranked suffers serious psychological or physical harm? Can you be legally responsible even if you never intended to physically hurt anyone?
The answer may be YES.