Trespass to the Person

In one line

Trespass to the person is the group of torts that protect the body and personal liberty against direct interference: battery, assault, mayhem and false imprisonment.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: trespass to the person consists of any direct and intentional interference with the body or the liberty of another without lawful justification; it comprises battery, which is the actual application of force, assault, which is putting another in reasonable apprehension of immediate force, mayhem, which is an aggravated battery depriving a person of a member useful in fighting, and false imprisonment, which is total restraint of liberty; each is actionable per se, that is, without proof of damage, and each is also an offence under the penal law.

The three features they share

1. The interference must be DIRECT. This is what separates a trespass from an action on the case, and from negligence. Throwing a stone at a person is a battery, because the force is applied by the act itself. Leaving a stone on a dark path so that somebody trips over it is not a battery; it may be negligence. The old illustration is a log thrown on to a highway: it is trespass if it hits somebody as it falls, and a nuisance or negligence if somebody stumbles over it afterwards.

2. They are actionable per se. The plaintiff need not prove that he suffered any loss. This is injuria sine damno, and chapter [Injuria Sine Damno] explains why the law is like that. A man detained for four days in comfort has been falsely imprisoned as surely as one detained in a cell.

3. The act must be intentional or negligent, and voluntary. A person who is pushed into another has not committed a battery; the person who pushed him has. An act done in a fit or while asleep is not voluntary and is not a trespass.

The vocabulary

Force, in the law of battery, does not mean violence. The least touching of another in anger, or without consent and without lawful justification, is enough.

Actionable per se means actionable in itself, without proof of damage.

Direct means that the injury follows immediately from the act, rather than as a further consequence of it.

Consequential injury is harm that follows a wrongful act at one remove, and is the province of negligence and of the action on the case.

Where each of the four fits