You are a commercial balloon pilot in the business of flying couples on romantic champagne balloon flights. One morning, while aloft on such a flight over a picturesque valley of farms and vineyards, the wind suddenly shifts direction and begins to increase, carrying the balloon toward the nearby ocean. Rather than risk being swept out to sea, you quickly descend and land in a vineyard. The gondola leaves a swath of broken and uprooted grapevines before it drags to a halt and the balloon envelope deflates. You and your passengers emerge scratched, bruised, and shaken, but otherwise unhurt just as your ground crew pulls up in their four-wheel-drive truck, having torn their own swath through the vineyard while racing in to help you. Your crew has just begun gathering up the balloon when the enraged vintner arrives, jumping out of his Jeep brandishing a shotgun. Loudly pumping the shotgun's action to chamber a shell, the landowner levels the weapon on you and orders: "Just leave that damn thing where it lies, leave your truck where it sits, and start walking. I want all of you off my property right now before you do any more damage."

a. Have you, the pilot, committed an intentional tort? Explain.

b. Has your ground crew committed an intentional tort? Explain.

c. Has the landowner committed an intentional tort? Explain.

d. Were you, the pilot, negligent?

e. Do you have any legal defense that might keep you from having to pay for the damage to the grapevines (which can be very expensive)? Explain.

f. You are holding the magnum of champagne. Just as a member of your ground crew distracts the landowner, it occurs to you that you could just bop the old fool over the head with the champagne bottle, take away his shotgun, and be on your way without further hassle. What will you do? Why?