INJURY (Lat. in, negative, jus, a right). A wrong or tort ; cited in Woodruff v. Min. 18 Fed. 753, 781.
Any legal wrong which will give a cause of action to the one whose rights, person or property are injured thereby. Penn. R. Co. v. Merchant, 119 Pa. 561, 13 AU. 690, 4 Am. St. Rep. 659 (as used in Pa. Constitution).
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 individ uals 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 un lawful 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 in juries to his reversionary interests.
Injuries to real property are ousters, tres passes, nuisances, waste, subtraction of rent, disturbances 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 oth er, and that the same act may he, for example, a relative, a private, and a public Injury at once. For many injuries of this character the offender may be obliged to suffer punishment for the public wrong and to recompense the sufferer for the par ticular loss which he has sustained. The distinc 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 public injury done: though not always ; ne, for example, in case of a public nuisance which may be also a private nuisance.
Injuries arise in three ways: first, by non feasance, or the not doing what was a legal obligation, or duty, or contract, to perform; second, misfeasance, or the performance 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 bad 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 affecting the public, there are three descrip tions of remedies: first, the preventive, such as defence, resistance, reception, abatement of nuisance, surety of the peace, injunction, etc.; second, remedies for compensation,
which may be by arbitiation, suit, action, or summary proceedings before a justice of the peace; third, proceedings for punishment, as by indictment, or summary proceedings be fore a justice. When the injury is such as to affect the public, it becomes a crime, misde meanor, or offence, and the party may be punished by indictment, or summary convic tion 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 action for the private injury is generally suspend ed until the party particularly injured has fulfilled 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, Pr. 10 ; Ayliffe, Pand. 592.
There are many injuries for which the law affords no remedy. In general, it interferes only when there has been a visible physical injury inflicted, while it leaves almost total ly unprotected the whole class of the most malignant mental injuries and sufferings, un less in a few cases where, by a fiction, it sup poses some pecuniary loss, and sometimes af fords compensation to wounded feelings, A parent, for example, cannot sue, in that char acter, for an injury inflicted on his child, and when his own domestic happiness 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 serv ices; but the proof of loss of service has ref erence only to the form of the remedy. And when the action is sustained in point of form, damages may be given not only for the loss of service, but • also for all that the plaintiff can feel from the nature of the in jury ; Phelin v. Kenderdine, 20 Pa. 354 ; Lav ery v. Crooke, 52 Wis. 612, 9 N. .W. 599, 38 Am. Rep. 768. 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 defendant would justify, and the party injured must fail. Nor win 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 unnat urally enough, that a man is incapable of be ing alarmed or affected by such injuries to his feelings. See 1 Bish. Cr. L. § 591.