INJURY (Lat. in, negative, fn.', a right). A wrong or tort.
Absolute injuries are injuries to those rights which a person possesses as being a member of society.
Private injuries are infringements of the private or civil rights belonging to indivi duals considered as individuals.
Public injuries are breaches and violations of rights and duties which affect the whole community as a community.
Injuries to personal property are the unlaw ful taking and detention thereof from the owner ; and other injuries are some damage affecting the same while in the claimant's possession or that of a third person, or inju ries to his reversionary interests.
Injuries to real property are ousters, tres passes, nuisances, waste, subtraction of rent, disturbance of right of way, and the like.
Relative injuries are injuries to those rights which a person possesses in relation to the person who is immediately affected by the wrongful act done.
It is obvious that the divisions overlap each other, and that the same act may be, for example, a relative, a private, and a public injury at once. For many injuries of this character the offender may he obliged to suffer punishment for the public wrong and to recompense the sufferer for the par ticular loss which he has sustained. The distino tion is more commonly marked by the use of the terms civil injuries to denote private injuries, and of crimes, misdemeanors, etc. to denote the puhlio injury done: though not always; as, for example, in case of a public nuisance which may be also a private nuisance.
2. Injuries arise in three ways: first, by nonfeasance, or the not doing what was a legal obligation, or duty, or contract, to per form ; second, misfeasance, or the perform ance in an improper manner of an act which it was either the party's duty or his contract to perform ; third, malfeasance, or the unjust performance of some act which the party had no right or which he had contracted not to do.
The remedies are different as the injury affects private individuals or the public. When the injuries affect a private right and a private individual, although often also affect ing the public, there are three descriptions of remedies : first, the preventive, such as defence, resistance, recaption, abatement of nuisance, surety of the peace, injunction, etc. ; second, remedies for compensation, which may be by arbitration, suit, action, or summary proceedings before a justice of the peace ; proceedings for punishment, as •by indictment, or summary proceedings be fore a justice. Wizen the injury is such as to affect the public, it becomes a crime, misde meanor, or offence, and the party may be pun ished by indictment or summary conviction for the public injury, and by civil action at the suit of the party for the private wrong. But in cases of felony the remedy by acticn for the private injury is generally suspended until the party particularly injured has ful filled his duty to the public by prosecuting the offender for the public crime ; and in cases of homicide the remedy is merged in the felony. 1 Chitty, Praut.10; Ayliffe, Pand. 592.
3. There are many injuries for which the law affords no remedy. In general, it inter
feres only when there has been a visible physical injury inflicted, while it leaves al most totally unprotected the whole class of the most malignant mental injuries and suf ferings, unless in a few cages where, by a fiction, it supposes some pecuniary loss, and sometimes affords compensation, to wounded feelings. A parent, for example, cannot sue, in that character, for an injury inflicted on his child, and when his own domestic happi ness has been destroyed, unless the fact will sustain the allegation that the daughter was the servant of her father, and that by reason of such seduction he lost the benefit of her services. Another instance may be men tioned. A party cannot recover damages for verbal slander in many cases: as, when the facts published are true ; for the defend ant would justify, and the party injured must fail. Nor will the law punish criminally the author of verbal slander imputing even the most infamous crimes, unless done with in tent to extort a chattel, money, or valuable thing. The law presumes, perhaps unnaturally enough, that a man is incapable of being alarmed or affected by such injuries to his feelings. See 1 Chitty, Med. Jur. 320.
4. The true and sufficient reason for these rules would seem to be the uncertain charac ter of the injury inflicted, the impossibility of compensation, and the danger, supposing a pecuniary compensation to be attempted, that injustice would be done under the ex citement of the case. The sound principle, as the experience of the law amply indicates, is to inflict a punishment for crime, but not put up for sale, by the agency of a court of justice, those wounded feelings which would constitute the ground of the action.
In Civil Law. A delict committed in contempt or outrage of any one, whereby his body, his dignity, or his reputation is maliciously injured. Feet, Con!. ad Pand. 47, t. 10, n. 1.
A real injury is inflicted by any fact by which a person's honor or dignity is affected : as, striking one with a cane, or even aiming a blow without striking ; spitting in one's face ; assuming a coat of arms, or any other mark of distinction, proper to another, etc. The composing and publishing defamatory libels may be reckoned of this kind. Er skine, Pract. 4. 4. 45.
A verbal injury, when directed against a private person, consists in the uttering con tumelious words, which tend to injure his character by making him little or ridiculous. Where the offensive words are uttered in the heat of a dispute and spoken to the person's face, the law does not presume any malicious intention in the utterer, whose resentment generally subsides with his passion ; and yet even in that case the truth of the in jurious words "seldom absolves entirely from punishment. Where the injurious expres sions have a tendency to blacken one's moral character or fix some particular guilt upon him, and are deliberately repeated in differ ent companies, or handed about in whispers to confidants, the crime then becomes slan der, agreeably to the distinction of the Ro man law, Dig. 15, 12, de Injur.