Court case(1704) 6 Mod 149

The case was an action of assault and battery tried at nisi prius before Holt C.J. The report is very short and consists essentially of the Chief Justice's statement of the law to the jury on what kind of touching amounts to a battery. The question was how the law distinguishes an actionable battery from the ordinary, unavoidable contacts between people, for instance when they pass each other in a narrow way. The direction he gave became the classic statement of the boundary of the tort.

Holt C.J. resolved three propositions: first, that the least touching of another in anger is a battery; secondly, that if two or more meet in a narrow passage and, without any violence or design of harm, the one touches the other gently, it is no battery; and thirdly, that if any of them use violence against the other, to force his way in a rude, inordinate manner, it is a battery, as also any struggle about the passage to that degree as may do hurt. The touching itself, not any injury, is the wrong; but the law does not treat as battery the gentle contact that is inevitable in ordinary life.