Are You A Trespasser?: Trespass To Person

Good day fellas. My previous article centered on trespass to land which has its relationship with trespass to person.

Trespass to person entails protection of a person against interference with his person. Trespass to person can occur by way of an act, which threatens violence (assault), actual violence (battery), or deprivation of liberty (false imprisonment)

The tort of assault is an act which threatens violence and produces in the plaintiff, a reasonable expectation of immediate unlawful force.

When your act rashly to people in such a way that they are afraid you will harm them, you have committed assault on them. For an act to amount to assault, it must cause reasonable apprehension of fear, it must be intentional, and also immediate and direct. An example is throwing water at a person. When a person picks a bucket of water and throw at you, that act of throwing the water is an assault on you. The water does not have to drop on you. Note that the act mist be intentional

Battery on the other hand is closely associated with assault. It is the intentional or negligent and direct application of force to another person.

There must be physical contact to your body to guarantee battery. Following the example I gave above, battery is not committed on you until that water touches you.

In most cases assault and battery accompany each other. Thus, to throw water at you is assault, but if it drops on you it is battery. To slap you on the face is battery, but to approach you menacingly with clenched fist is an assault. Pointing a gun at you or even shooting it is assault, the bullet hitting you is battery. The list goes on.

When someone has threatened to hurt you, and you suffer apprehension of fear, you have been assaulted. The person might end up not carrying out the threat, but you have been assaulted.

Sometimes, battery can occur without assault. Example is someone hitting you from behind.

Failure to obtain consent from you before carrying out certain acts on your person amounts to battery It is battery for a doctor to carry out treatments on you without your consent. I would like to use the Nigerian case of Okekearu v. Tanko ((2002)15 NWLR(pt 791)659) as illustration. The plaintiff Okekearu in the course of removing some zinc from his mother's residence, injured his left finger. He claimed that the wound was not deep but neighbors still took him to the clinic of the defendant Tanko who amputated the finger without Okekearu's consent. Okekearu brought an action against the defendant, claiming general damages for battery resulting from amputation of his left finger. He succeeded.

Also, an unpermitted kiss is battery. It does not matter if the intention was good so long as you do not have the person's permission.

Battery can be committed on a sleeping person or on a person under anesthesia or even a lunatic. This occurs if the act carried out on the person is such that he or she would not have approved of if they were awake and aware. In a case where a lady visits a doctor and tells him, "I have ovarian cyst and appendicitis, take out the appendicitis but do not touch the cyst". The doctor will be held liable for battery if in the operating room he decides to remove the cyst. This is because the lady gave him no right to do so.

Assault and battery are actionable per se. This means that damage must not be caused to your body before you go to court.

I hope I impacted something in you today. Peace ☮️