Most personal injury cases are of accidents, slips, or falls. However, there are some cases where the harm or hurt is done intentionally instead of in an accident. These cases are named battery or assault in the personal injury field.
Usually, any assault or battery victim files a case against the offender to compensate for all the injuries and losses caused by the incident. The offender must pay the entire amount decided by the court as they are responsible for causing intentional harm to the victim.
However, some criteria must be considered to distinguish between battery and assault. To know more about what kind of lawsuit you can file against your offender, contact a personal injury lawyer in Roseville as soon as possible. Moreover, just to be sure from your side, you can go through the following information for how the battery differs from assault in a personal injury case.
What’s an assault?
If you consider a personal injury case, assault is an act of intentionally harming someone that results in severe physical or mental injuries. However, the offender must not necessarily come in physical contact with the victim to assault them. Any action that makes the victim predict that they are not safe or about to be harmed can be liable as an assault.
In most cases, the fear comes from the prediction of being harmed severely; as long as the response is justified, it can be liable for a personal injury claim.
What’s a battery?
The standard definition of battery is that a person makes offensive or harmful contact with the victim to threaten or harm them. While communication cannot always be physical, the victim can file a lawsuit for battery if the connection is offensive.
Moreover, a battery can also happen without an assault. For example, if a person is standing and someone comes and puc=shes them from behind, they can not sense the threat as they never saw the person coming from behind.
When a person wants to file a personal injury lawsuit under the battery, there are some criteria they must go through:
- The contact was direct and immediate, giving no time to the victim to predict or prevent the attack
- The contact can be indirect and quick like someone threw a stone at you
- The contact can be indirect and remote; for example, someone intentionally sets a trap for you and wait for you to fall into it.
