Trespass - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition trespass

Definition :

Trespass [fr. transgressio, Lat.], any transgression of the law, less than treason, felony, or misprision of either.

An unlawful act committed against the person or property of another esp. wrongful entry on another's real property, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn.

The action of trespass lies where a trespass has been committed either to the plaintiff's person or property. A trespass is an injury committed with violence, and this violence may be either actual or implied; and the law will imply violence, though none is actually used, where the injury is of a direct and immediate kind, and committed on the person or tangible and corporeal property of the plaintiff. Of actual violence an assault and battery is an instance; of implied, a peaceable but wrongful enter upon the plaintiff's lands, Steph. Plead., 7th Edn., 11, 37, 154. As to trespass on the case, see CASE and VI ET ARMIS.

Trespass, as an unlawful act committed against a person and property of another, Black's Law Dictionary (7th Edn., by Garner) see also Kewal Chand Mimani v. S.K. Sen, (2001) 6 SCC 512.

Trespass, has been used by lawyers and laymen in three senses of varying degree of generality (1) In its widest and original signification it includes any wrongful act-any infringement or transgression of the rule of right. This use is common in the Authorised Version of Bible, and was presumably familiar when that version was first published. But it never obtained recognition in the technical language of the law, and is now archaic even in popular speech, (2) In a second and narrower signification - its true legal sense - the term mean any legal wrong for which the appropriate remedy was a writ of trespass - viz. any direct and forcible injury to person, land, or chattels, (3) the third and narrowest meaning of the term is that in which, in accordance with popular speech, it is limited to one particular kind of trespass in the second sense - viz. the tort of trespass to land, R.F.V. Hewton, Salmond on the Law of Torts 4 (17th Edn., 1977).

It implies unlawful or unwarrantable intrusion upon land. It is a transgression of law or right, and a trespasser is a person entering premises of another with knowledge that his entrance is in excess of the permission that has been given to him, Kewal Chand Mimani v. S.K. Sen, AIR 2001 SC 2569.

Means an unlawful act committed against a person and property of another. The term trespass has been used by lawyers and laymen in three senses of varying degrees of generality, (1) In its widest and original signification it includes any wrongful act, any infringement or transgression of the rule of right. This use is common in the authorized version of the 'Bible'; (2) In a second and narrower signification - Its true legal sense - the term means any legal wrong for the appropriate remedy was a writ of trespass - viz. any direct and forcible injury to person, land or chattels, (3) The third narrower meaning of the term is that in which, in accordance with popular speech, it is limited to one particular kind of trespass in the second sense - viz., the tort of trespass to land (trespass quare clausum fregit), Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn. (See also Salmond on the Law of Torts, 17th Edn., 1977).

Trespass, signifies any transgression or offence against the law of nature, of society or the country in which we live; whether it relates to a man's person or his property. Therefore beating another is a trespass, for which an action of trespass in assault and will lie. Taking of and detaining a man's goods are respectively trespasses, for which an action of trespass on the case in trover and conversion, is given by law; so, also, non-performance of promises or undertakings is a trespass, upon which an action of trespass on the case in assumpit is grounded; and, in general, any misfeasance, or act of one man. Whereby another is injuriously affected or damnified, is a transgression or trespass in its largest sense; for which will lie, Words & Phrases, 2nd Edn., 1997