Trespass - Indian Laws - General

Word trespass The word trespass in common English acceptation means and implies unlawful or unwarrantable intrusion upon land. It is a transgression of law or right, and a trespasser is a person, entering the premises of another with knowledge that his entrance is in excess of the permission that has been given to him. The Law Lexicon (The Encyclopaedic Law Dictionary with Legal Maxims and Words Phrases , 2nd Edition, 1997 by P. Ramanatha Aiyar) hast however, the following to note: Trespass in its largest and most extensive sense, 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 battery will lie. Taking or detaining a man s goods are respectively trespasses, for which an action of trespass on the case in drover and conversion, is given by the Law; so, also, non-performance of promises or undertakings is a trespass, upon which an action of trespass on the case in assumesit 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 an action will lie. (3 Comm. c.12, Tomlins Law Ok.) Black s Law Dictionary (Seventh Edition by Garner) records a meaning to the word trespass As an unlawful act committed against a person and property of another: The Dictionary also quotes a passage Groin Salmond on Tort and which we may also profitably record here for assessment of situation and for proper appreciation of the import of the word trespass . The passage reads as below ; 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 Authorised Version of the Bible, and was presumably familiar when that version was first published. But it never obtained recognition in me 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 means 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 sensed-viz., the tort of trespass to land (trespass quare clausum fregit) . R.F.V. Heuston, Salmond on the Law of Torts 4 (17th ed. 1977). Significantly, Salmond also in his Law of Torts, stated that the word trespasser has an ugly sound, as it covers wickedness in the innocence and the duty of the occupier also varies according to the nature of the trespass. KEWAL CHAND MIMANI (D) BY LRS. VERSUS S.K. SEM AND ORS. - 2001 (7) TMI 1294 - SUPREME COURT