Torts Affecting Personal Relations

In one line

These are the wrongs that injure a person through his relationships: enticing away a spouse, harbouring one, seducing a servant or daughter, and depriving somebody of the company or services of a family member.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the torts affecting personal relations are enticement of a spouse, harbouring a spouse, seduction of a daughter or servant, and the causing of loss of services or of consortium; they developed at a time when a husband had a proprietary interest in his wife's society and a master in his servant's services, most of them are obsolete or abolished in England, and in India the surviving practical head is compensation for loss of consortium and for loss of the services of a deceased family member, which is regularly awarded in motor accident claims.

The historical shape of these wrongs

They rest on two ideas the modern law has abandoned.

The husband's proprietary interest. At common law a husband had a right to his wife's society and services, and an action against anybody who deprived him of them. The wife had no corresponding action.

The master's interest in his servant. A master had an action against a person who injured his servant so that the master lost his services, and the daughter of the house was treated, by a fiction, as a servant so that her father could sue her seducer.

Both ideas have gone, and the wrongs that rest on them have gone with them, with one exception.

The four wrongs

Enticement. Persuading a spouse to leave or to remain apart from the other. It required an active inducement rather than the mere offering of shelter.

Harbouring. Receiving and keeping a spouse who has left, with knowledge and against the other's wishes, so as to prevent a return. Providing shelter to a person fleeing cruelty was never a wrong.

Seduction. The action lay to the father or master, not to the woman, for the loss of her services caused by her seduction, and the fiction that a daughter was a servant was what allowed it. Damages went far beyond the value of any services.

Loss of services and of consortium. Where a person was injured by a wrong, another whose legal relationship gave a right to his services or society could sue for the loss.

What survives, and where it is found today

In England the actions for enticement, harbouring and seduction were abolished by statute in 1970, and the action for loss of services followed.

In India the position is not governed by any such statute, but the actions are effectively dead for the same reasons: the proprietary premise is inconsistent with the equality guaranteed by the Constitution, and matrimonial relief is the appropriate remedy for the conduct these actions were aimed at. What survives, and thrives, is compensation for loss of consortium and for loss of the services of a person killed or injured.