ASSAULT AND BATTERY (Fr. batterie, from battre, to beat, batter). Au infringement of the common-law right to personal safety and freedom. The words 'assault' and 'battery' are commonly used together. for the reason that the two offenses which they indicate are usually committed together. But the offenses are sepa rate and distinct.
An assault is an attempt or offer to inflict bodily injury upon another, accompanied by such circumstances as denote. at the time, an intention, coupled with the present ability, to do violence to the person. Battery is the actual infliction of threatened violence, the consum mation of an assault. words of abuse will not constitute an assault: nor will a threat or offer to do violence, when it clearly appears that he who makes the threat or offer has no inten tion or no present ability to carry it into execu tion. But an actual intent or an actual present ability to injure the person is not necessary. It is sufficient that these are apparent and that the eircumstan•es are such as to cause the per son threatened to believe, on reasonable grounds, that such apparent intent and ability are real. Thus the pointing of an unloaded gull at a per son who is ignorant of the fact that it is not loaded, the circumstances indicating an inten tion to shoot, will amount to an assault. The least touching of another's person in anger or willfully or negligently, whether with the hand or with a stone or other weapon, is a battery.
To use, or to attempt or offer to use, violence upon the body of another is in some cases justi fiable. Thus a father or a schoolmaster may chastise a child, within proper bounds and in the process of rightful discipline. So a person is justified in using all necessary means, even though obliged to resort to force, to protect and defend his person, the person of his servant, or of one of his family, or his real or personal property. The force employed in defense, how ever, must be no greater than the emergency re quires: for any excess of violence the person using it will be responsible, as for an assault and battery.
Assault and battery are both civil and crimi nal offenses. As civil wrongs they are classified under the head of torts, and subject the wrong doer to an action for damages: and as mimes, under that of misdemeanors. Certain criminal assa ti are known as aggravated assaults, and are followed by a more severe punishment. Such are assaults with intent to kill or with intent to commit rape, and assaults upon magistrates in courts of justice, with knowledge of the offi cial character of the persons assaulted. See the authorities referred to under CRIMINAL LAW; and TouTs.