Scienter

In law, scienter (Law Latin for "knowingly", from Latin scire 'to know, to separate one thing from another') is a legal term for intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. An offending party then has knowledge of the "wrongness" of an act or event prior to committing it.

For example, if a man sells a car with brakes that do not work to his friend, but the seller does not know about the brake problem, the seller then has no scienter. If he sells the car and knew of the problem before he sold the car, he has scienter.