Legal injury

“ Such difficulty in ascertaining the exact amount of damage is a risk properly cast upon the wrong-doing defendant. But proof of the legal injury, which is the basis of his suit, is plaintiff's burden. He does not establish it merely by proving that there was a wrong to the public nor by showing that if he had been injured ascertainment of the exact amount of damages would have had an inevitable speculative element to be left for a jury's conscientious guess. ”

“ The statute gives a right of action for damages to the injured party, and by the use of these legal terms clearly indicated that the damages recoverable were those known to the law and intended as compensation for the injury sustained. It is elementary that in a suit at law both the fact and the amount of the damage must be proved. ”

“ If a person loses an eye, an ear, a limb, or his general health, the law implies damage, the same as if deprived of his property or any other legal right. Words actionable in themselves imply damage, and none need be proved; but if actionable only by reason of some consequence which might or might not follow, then the particular damage must be averred and proved. The loss of hearing, of memory, and understanding, imply injury, and necessarily and naturally result therefrom, and no particular damage need be averred or proved. ”

“ But the inhabitants of the State who have suffered injury or who are threatened with injury by the unlawful practices alleged in the amended complaint are alone entitled to seek a legal remedy for their injury, and are the proper parties plaintiff in any suit to enforce their rights which are alleged to have been infringed. It has long been settled by the decisions of this Court that a State is without standing to maintain suit for injuries sustained by its citizens and inhabitants for which they may sue in their own behalf. ”

“ The word “accident,” as applied to personal injury cases, has a legal meaning as referring to an injury which occurs without being caused by the negligence of either the plaintiff or the defendant. Bush v. Skelton, 91 Ga. App. 83, 84 S. E. 2d 835 (1954) .
In a personal injury case, an “accident” is an event which happens unmixed with the lack of ordinary care and diligence of either party, for which there can be no recovery. ”

“ The argument of the insurance company is that the killing of the deceased was an injury to or violation of a legal right or interest of the company; that, as a consequence thereof, it sustained a loss, which is the proximate effect of the injury. ”

“ It does not bar a cause of action; its effect, rather, is to prevent what might otherwise be a cause of action, from ever arising. Thus injury occurring more than ten years after the negligent act allegedly responsible for the harm, forms no basis for recovery. The injured party literally has no cause of action. The harm that has been done is damnum absque injuria-a wrong for which the law affords no redress. ”

“ The death of the assured not having been the effect of any cause specified in the proviso of the policy, and not coming within any warranty in the application, the question recurs whether it is within the general words of the leading sentence of the policy, by which he is declared to be insured 'against bodily injuries effected through external, accidental, and violent means.' This sentence does not, like the proviso, speak of what the injury is 'caused by,' but it looks only to the 'means' by which it is effected. No one doubts that hanging is a violent means of death. ”

“ Accordingly, a person could be convicted of unlawful wounding and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, contrary to ss 20 and 47 of the 1861 Act, for committing sado-masochistic acts which inflicted injuries which were neither transient nor trifling, notwithstanding that the acts were committed in private, the person on whom the injuries were inflicted consented to the acts and no permanent injury was sustained by the victim. ”

“ But it has never been thought that an actionable personal injury gives rise to as many causes of action as there are states whose laws will permit a suit to recover for the injury or that despite the full faith and credit clause the injured person, more than one entitled to recover for breach of contract, could go from state to state to recover in each damages or compensation for his injury. ”

“ In the case of injuries to the person caused by negligence, the tribunal considers, as part of the general damage, the actual pain and suffering, including nervous shock (but not wounded feelings) and the permanent or temporary character of the injury, and as special damage the loss of time and employment during recovery and the cost of cure. ”

“ No damages shall be awarded against a public entity or public employee for pain and suffering resulting from any injury; provided, however, that this limitation on the recovery of damages for pain and suffering shall not apply in cases of permanent loss of a bodily function. ”

“ Although damnum absque injuria is a matter of frequent occurrence, yet injuria absque damno may be said to be unknown to our law; for 'a damage is not merely pecuniary, but an injury imports a damage when a man is thereby hindered of his right.' Per Holt, C. J. Ashby vs. ”

“ Questions as to the CONSEQUENCES of WOUNDS NOT FATAL may often be brought up in civil actions for damages. In certain countries the question of the consequences as to incapacity may determine whether an injury shall be the ground of a criminal as well as of a civil action. Thus in France an injury which involves an incapacity of twenty days or more subjects the assailant to a criminal action. ”

“ It may be admitted that the plaintiff in this American case would not have suffered exactly as she did, and probably not to the same extent as she did, if she had not been pregnant at the time; and no doubt the driver of the defendant’s horses could not anticipate that she was in this condition. But what does that fact matter? If a man is negligently run over or otherwise negligently injured in his body, it is no answer to the sufferer’s claim for damages that he would have suffered less injury, or no injury at all, if he had not had an unusually thin skull or an unusually weak heart. ”

“ Any civil injury which gives rise exclusively to one of these other forms of remedy stands outside the class of torts. The obstruction of a public highway, for example, is to be classed as a civil injury, inasmuch as it may give rise to civil proceedings instituted by the Attorney-General for an injunction; but although a civil injury, it is not a tort, save in those exceptional instances in which, by reason of special damage suffered by an individual, it gives rise to an action for damages at his suit. ”

“ The trend of cases arising under the APA and other statutes authorizing judicial review of federal agency action has been toward recognizing that injuries other than economic harm are sufficient to bring a person within the meaning of the statutory language, and toward discarding the notion that an injury that is widely shared is ipso facto not an injury sufficient to provide the basis for judicial review. ”

“ These embrace particularly the liabilities created by the common law, arising from tortious injuries inflicted upon persons standing in various special legal relationships, and causing harm not only to the injured person but also, as for loss of services and assimilated injuries, to the person to whom he is bound by the relation's tie. ”

“ The authorities are so numerous and so uniform to the proposition, that by the common law no civil action lies for an injury which results in death, that it is impossible to speak of it as a proposition open to question. ”

“ We interpret 'maliciously injuring' to import doing a harm malevolently, for the sake of the harm as an end in itself, and not merely as a means to some further end legitimately desired. Otherwise the phrase would be tautologous, since a wilful injury is malicious in the sense familiar to declarations and indictments, where, indeed, the word means no more than foreseen, or even less than that. A death is caused of malice aforethought if, under the circumstances, known to the actor, the probability of its ensuing from the act done is great and manifest according to common experience. ”

“ Provision is also made by another section of the same statute that in all cases in which the death of any person ensues from injury inflicted by the wrongful act of another, and in which an action for damages might have been maintained at the common law had death not ensued, the person inflicting such injury shall be liable to an action for damages for the injury caused by the death of such person, to be recovered by an action on the case for the use of his or her husband, widow, children, or next of kin. ”

“ In other words, while admitting that plaintiff’s injury resulted from the collision due to the joint or concurrent acts of negligence of defendants, she must be confined in her recovery for such damages to a judgment rendered against the defendant who had the “last clear chance” to avoid the collision and neglected to act upon it. Appellant seeks to apply the well-established principle that “he who last has a clear opportunity of avoiding the accident, by the exercise of proper care to avoid injuring another, must do so.” ”

“ The former distinction between maim and other types of injury was out of date. Beating with the intent of doing some bodily harm is malum in se to which consent is not a defence. (5) There are exceptions to this general rule, such as sparring, sport or horseplay. (6) But what happened in the instant case did not fall within any of the established exceptions. (7) For the purpose of the general rule bodily injury meant any hurt or injury calculated to interfere with the health or comfort of the prosecutor; it need not be permanent, but must be more than merely transient or trifling. ”

“ A familiar illustration is to be found in the Employers' Liability Act (Comp. St. §§ 8657-8665) which gives to personal representatives a new cause of action for causing death, although the foundation is the original wrongful injury to the deceased. ”

“ The statute supplants that duty with the far more drastic duty of paying damages for injury or death at work due in whole or in part to the employer's negligence. The employer is stripped of his common-law defenses and for practical purposes the inquiry in these cases today rarely presents more than the single question whether negligence of the employer played any part, however small, in the injury or death which is the subject of the suit. ”

“ According to the appellants' case, if an accused person charged with wounding relies on consent as a defence, the jury will have to find whether anything more than actual bodily harm was occasioned, something which is not contemplated by s 20. (5) The distinction between common assault and all other attacks on the person is that common assault does not necessarily involve significant bodily injury. It is much easier to draw the line between significant injury and some injury than to differentiate between degrees of injury. ”

“ The right of action thus given although for the same act or neglect for which the person injured would have had a right of action in his lifetime, differs from an action brought by him, both in the ground on which it proceeds, and in the award of damages. It is not a common-law action to recover damages for the injuries suffered by him while he lived, but it is an action given by statute for causing his death. ”

“ The defendant being guilty of negligence, your next inquiry will be whether the plaintiff was guilty of any such negligence as will prevent him from recovering, for it is a principle of law that one injured by the negligence of another cannot recover damages for such injury, if, by his own negligence, he contributed to the injury. ”

“ In actions to recover for injuries not intentionally inflicted but resulting from a breach of duty which another owed to the party injured—commonly classed as actions for negligence—the fact that the plaintiff or defendant at the time of the injury was a lawbreaker may possibly be relevant as an incidental circumstance, but is otherwise immaterial unless the act of violating the law is in itself a breach of duty to the party injured in respect to the injury suffered. ”

“ THIRD.-The damage alleged in the declaration was special, as distinguished from particular damage.
Particular damage is where the particular instance of damage is avowed; special damage is where the loss follows from a specific statement of a fact, which generally or naturally results from the statement, as a cause competent to entail such a consequence.
The declaration avers that the injury affected the plaintiff's brain, and affected his memory and understanding, which were impaired thereby ”

“ Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. 181 Ill. 605, 611, 54 N. E. 1026: 'When irreparable injury is spoken of, it is not meant that the injury is beyond the possibility of repair, or beyond the possibility of compensation in damages, but it must be of such constant and frequent recurrence that no fair or reasonable redress can be had therefor in a court of law.' See also Newell v. ”

“ No one can seek damages on the bare assertion that he is entitled to damages, and therefore claims damages. Damage is sometimes stated to be a cause of action, but then damage means injury. Damages are one of the reliefs asked for as the compensation for an injury. ”

“ If it is a flesh wound, the fine shall be eight thousand; if a bone be broken or sinews cut, forty thousand: but if the injury done to the wounded party be of such a nature as to deprive him of the means of earning a livelihood, the offending party must, in that case, provide for him. ”