Distress (law)

“ There may be cases in which the seduction, without producing pregnancy or sexual disease, causes bodily injury, impairing the health of the servant, and resulting in a loss of services to her master. So the criminal connection may be accomplished under such circumstances, as, for instance, of violence or fraud, that its proximate effect is mental distress or disease, impairing her health and destroying her capacity to labor. ”

“ What the nation now asks is that men, women, and children should, by appropriate measures, be prevented from sinking to a condition of destitution; and that such as unavoidably fall into that state should be taken in hand with a view, not merely to their relief, but to their effectual cure. This is work which a Poor Law authority, by the very nature of its being, can never perform effectively. Any Poor Law authority, call it by what name you may, is necessarily confined to dealing with persons who are actually "destitute" or actually "in distress" ”

“ Legislation perplexed is synonymous with crime unpunished,—a reflection, by the way, I should never have made, if I had never had a law-suit: sufferers are ever reformers.
Revolving, then, these anxious and unpleasing thoughts, interrupted, at times, by regrets of a purer and less selfish nature for the friend I had lost, and wandering, at others, to the brighter anticipations of rejoining Isora, and drinking from her eyes my comfort for the past and my hope for the future, I continued and concluded my day's travel. ”

“ But if the loss of health is caused by mental suffering, which is not the consequence of the seduction, but is produced by subsequent intervening causes, such as abandonment by the seducer, shame resulting from exposure, or other similar causes, the loss of services is too remote a consequence of the criminal act, and the action cannot be maintained. ”

“ However painful the mental effects upon another of. an act, though purely wanton or even malicious, yet if the act itself is otherwise lawful, the suffering inflicted is damnum absque injuria. Injury of feelings may indeed be taken account of in ascertaining the amount of damages when attending what is recognized as a legal injury; [14] but our system, unlike the Roman law, does not afford a remedy even for mental suffering which results from mere contumely and insult, from an intentional and unwarranted violation of the "honor" of another. ”

“ Then, when there should remain no one to be distressed and degraded by his crime, then he would discharge his hardened conscience of the intolerable load it bore, and give himself up to justice, to be dealt with according to law. ”

“ How much remorse should a man suffer to pay the debt of a life? If the law is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, how much hourly remorse and torture, such as Jo's, should balance the eye or the tooth or the life? ”

“ Aside from the pecuniary consequences resulting from such an injury, his life must be one both monotonous and irksome, and almost wholly destitute of those pleasures and that happiness which those in full health, bodily and mentally, must ever enjoy.
FOURTH.-When the action can be maintained without specifying any particular damage, it is not necessary to aver any particular instance of damage.
When the law implies damage, there can be no reason for stating it with particularity. ”

“ And likewise if one Neighbour take a Distress of another without Award of the King's Court, whereby he hath Damage, he shall be punished in the same wise, and that after the Quantity of the Trespass.
(6) And nevertheless sufficient and full Amends shall be made to them that have sustained Loss by such Distresses. ”

“ All law, says the utilitarian, implies 'sanctions'—motives equally operative upon all members of society; and, as the last resort, so far as criminal law is concerned, the sanction of physical suffering. ”

“ That a necessary favour might be shown to the first, in pity and compassion to the unfortunate, in commiseration of casualty and poverty, which no man is exempt from the danger of. That a due rigour and restraint be laid upon the second, that villainy and knavery might not be encouraged by a law. That a due care be taken of the third, that men’s estates may as far as can be secured to them. And due limits set to the last, that no man may have an unlimited power over his fellow-subjects, to the ruin of both life and estate. ”

“ Is it not madness that those very people who, by their situations, are most liable to the abuse of their passions, are subservient to no law, and acknowledge no tribunal which can call them to account? Misery is near, and promised vengeance is far off ”

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ In such circumstances as those presented here, the long-recognized common-law rule permitted no recovery; the decisions to this effect 'rest upon the elementary principle that mere mental pain and anxiety are too vague for legal redress where no injury is done to person, property, health, or reputation.' Cooley, Torts, 3d ed. ”

“ Where it does not act, it languishes and becomes blunted, until finally it grows almost insensible to pain. Irritability, that is the capacity to feel pain at the violation of one’s legal rights, and action, that is the courage and the determination to repel the attack, are, in my eyes, the two criteria of a healthy feeling of legal right. ”

“ But in such cases the law pries into the mind only to determine the nature and culpability of an act, as a mitigating or aggravating circumstance, and I know of no situation in which a citizen may incur civil or criminal liability or disability because a court infers an evil mental state where no act at all has occurred. ”

“ And every one ought, by the universally recognized rules of right and wrong, to think so much with regard to the safety of others who may be jeopardized by his conduct; and if, being in such circumstances, he does not think, and in consequence neglects, or if he neglects to use ordinary care and skill, and injury ensue, the law, which takes cognizance of and enforces the rules of right and wrong, will force him to give an indemnity for the injury. ”

“ The doctrine that the loss of the servant would be a penalty adequate to the desert of the master, admits his guilt and his desert of some punishment, and it prescribes a kind of punishment, rejected by the law, in all cases where man took the life of man, whether with or without intent to kill. ”

“ Moreover, Distresses shall be reasonable, and not too great.
(5) And he that taketh great and unreasonable Distresses, shall be grievously amerced for the Excess of such Distresses.'
Note : this act is listed in the Chronological Table of Statutes as the Distress Act, 1267
Fitz. Bar. 120, 275.
29 Ed. 3. c. 23.
N. B. This seems to be a mistaken Reference, there being no Stat. in 20th of Ed. 3. Kel. 50.
Enforced by 3 Ed. 1. c. 16.
Enforced and amended by 1 & 2 P. & M. c. 12. Distresses shall be reasonable. Enforced by 28 Ed. 1. stat. 3. c. 12. 2 Inst. 106. See the References to Chap. 1. ”

“ If they are caught in their own toils, and are themselves the sufferers, it is a legitimate consequence of their violation of the rules of law and morality. Those who violate these laws must suffer the penalty. ”

“ But to experience the pain without taking to heart its warning to ward off the impending danger, to bear it patiently and take no measure of defense, is a denial of the feeling of legal right, excusable, perhaps, under certain circumstances, in a particular case, but impossible in the long run without the most disastrous consequences to the feeling of legal right itself. ”

“ And thus much for these extrajudicial remedies, as well for real as personal injuries, which are furnished by the law, where the parties are so peculiarly circumstanced, as not to be able to apply for redress in the usual and ordinary methods to the courts of public justice. ”

“ It is not reason, and it can not be law—divine, or moral—that unfaithfulness, or willful and obstinate desertion, or persistent cruelty of the stronger party, should afford no ground for relief.......If no redress be legalized, the law itself will be set at defiance, and greater injury to soul and body will result from clandestine methods of relief. ”

“ I suppose the meaning to be universally applied to man’s transgression—namely, to break a law is virtually to set aside the Lawgiver, and to legislate for yourself. The act may, indeed, be more or less conscious, wilful, reflective ”

“ The actual distinction between crimes and civil injuries in English law is no doubt largely accidental. As the historians of law point out, the civil process, having compensation, not punishment, for its object, is the form which the interference of the community for the maintenance of rights originally takes. ”

“ Now this same suffering, if inflicted by the law, will be what is commonly called a punishment; if incurred for want of any friendly assistance, which the misconduct, or supposed misconduct, of the sufferer has occasioned to be withholden, a punishment issuing from the moral sanction; if through the immediate interposition of a particular providence, a punishment issuing from the religious sanction.
IX. A man's goods, or his person, are consumed by fire. ”

“ If it can be said that it is to some defect of moral character or personal shortcoming that the sinking into destitution at the bottom of the road is, in a final analysis, more correctly to be ascribed—though on this point which among us is qualified to be a judge?—it is abundantly clear that the assumed defect or shortcoming manifests itself in, or at least is accompanied by, either child-neglect, sickness, feeble-mindedness, or unemployment. These are the roads by which the future pauper travels. ”

“ The punishments of a social, moral or religious nature attending legal guilt are not legal punishments, being neither allowed for nor inflicted by the minions of the law. They are supplementary pains with which society sees fit to surround the primary pains. ”

“ Light is thrown upon this distinction between the deprivation of a right and its violation-deprivation being competent to the law-making and law-enforcing organs of a State-by comparison of the language of § 1979, establishing liability for the 'deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution * * *,' 17 Stat. ”

“ A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and swiftly retributive. ”

“ It may, I conceive, be truly said that, viewed in relation to an action for negligence, direct bodily impact is, without resulting damage, as insufficient a ground of legal claim as the infliction of fright. That fright—where physical injury is directly produced by it—cannot be a ground of action merely because of the absence of any accompanying impact appears to me to be a contention both unreasonable and contrary to the weight of authority. ”

“ In some cases the law punishes even slight neglect, in others ordinary, in others only gross neglect. The omission of that care which the law requires in the case is called juridical fault, and after sentence there will be an obligation in conscience to make good damage caused through juridical fault, for the laws prescribing this are just, inasmuch as they make men more careful and conduce to the public good. ”

“ In respect to this end, the person whose rights have been invaded no longer weighs all the sacrifices and inconveniences which the suit at law draws after it—the end in his eyes is compensation for the means. It is not a mere money-interest which urges the person whose rights have been infringed to institute legal proceedings, but moral pain at the wrong which has been endured. ”

“ To establish the tort of outrage or intentional infliction of emotional distress, a plaintiff must prove (1) the defendant intended to inflict emotional distress or knew or should have known that emotional distress was the likely result of his conduct, (2) the conduct was extreme and out.rageous and was utterly intolerable in a civilized community, (3) the defendant's conduct was the cause of the plaintiff's distress, and (4) the emotional distress sustained by the plaintiff was so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it. ”

“ And depend upon it that where, in a delicate and painful matter, so much comes to light, much more remains in darkness, and that for one case that could be reached by the action of a magistrate, scores, or even hundreds, would be reached by a simple change of the principle of law. Those who contend that the principle of the law is not bad are bound to give some satisfactory explanation of the phenomena, to tell us why sufferings are so frequent among those who remain subject to it, and why all who can escape from it, do so. ”

“ A pain can be inflicted upon the wrong-doer, of a sort which does not restore the injured party to his former situation, or to another equally good, but which is inflicted for the very purpose of causing pain. And so far as this punishment takes the place of compensation, whether on account of the death of the person to whom the wrong was done, the indefinite number of persons affected, the impossibility of estimating the worth of the suffering in money, or the poverty of the criminal, it may be said that one of its objects is to gratify the desire for vengeance. ”