Definition
Assault or battery.
Direct interference with person's body.
Etymology & Origin
From Old French 'trespas' (a transgression, passage beyond bounds), derived from Vulgar Latin 'transpassare' (to pass across, to overstep), from Latin 'trans' (across, beyond) + 'passus' (step, pace). Trespass originally meant 'overstepping' a boundary; trespass to person is the wrongful overstepping of the boundary of another's bodily integrity. The tort sub-divides into assault, battery, and false imprisonment.
Full Legal Analysis
Trespass to Person: The Boundary of Bodily Integrity
Every person possesses an inviolable interest in the security and integrity of their own body. Trespass to person is the family of torts that protects this interest, comprising three distinct wrongs: assault, battery, and false imprisonment. Each guards a different facet of personal security — the apprehension of harmful contact, the actual harmful contact itself, and the deprivation of liberty — but all are united by the principle that no one may, without justification, invade the physical person of another.
Assault and Battery Distinguished
An assault is an act that causes the victim reasonably to apprehend an imminent battery — the threatening gesture, the raised fist, the brandished weapon that places the victim in fear of immediate harm. A battery is the actual, intentional and direct application of force to the person of another, however slight. The distinction matters: assault is apprehension; battery is contact. Striking at someone and missing is an assault; the blow that lands is a battery. Both are actionable per se — that is, without proof of actual damage — because the law treats the affront to dignity and security as itself the injury.
Intention and Justification
Trespass to person is an intentional tort. The defendant must intend the act that constitutes the trespass, though they need not intend specific harm. Lawful justifications defeat the claim: self-defence against an unprovoked attack, the defence of others, the prevention of crime, lawful parental correction, and reasonable force used in making a lawful arrest. The BNS also criminalises assault and battery as offences against the person, so the same conduct may give rise to both civil liability and criminal punishment.
“The law of trespass to person is the law of human dignity made concrete. It declares that every body is a sovereign territory, entered only by consent or by lawful authority, and that the smallest uninvited touch — even where it leaves no mark — is an affront the courts will recognise.”
