Trespass
idea · 2 works · 11 mentions · 35 anchored passages
trespass · trespasser · an action of trespass · continuing trespass · trespass quare clausum fregit · trespass to land · trespass to property · trespass upon the special case · trespass vi et armis
in the texts
The Law of Torts
The tort of direct, unlawful interference with land or goods.
Trespass to land and wrongful dealing with goods by trespass, “conversion,” or otherwise are torts.
Whatever may or might be the case in other legal systems, the intention to violate another’s rights, or even the knowledge that one is violating them, is not in English law necessary to constitute the wrong of trespass as regards either land or goods, or of conversion as regards goods.
At the same time a certain amount of excuse may be made on rational grounds for the place and function of the law of trespass to property in the English system.
The Genius of the Common Law
A form of action requiring the strictest special pleading, exemplified by Crogate's own historical case and by suits for assault or injury to land.
If you sue for a trespass to your land, however small the injury, the greatest strictness of pleading is required, but if you are actually turned out, you may recover the land itself by a fictitious mode of proceeding called ejectment, without any special pleading at all.
The only forms that would really serve were those of the later thirteenth century which had a specially royal and official character, and therefore were fairly free from archaic incidents, namely Trespass and Deceit.