Difference between Assault and Battery

Assault and Battery are the two most common crimes that can be charged under Tort Law. Assault and Battery can be treated in both ways where a person can be charged in a civil lawsuit, i.e. demanding a form of compensation in the form of damages in monetary terms, or might be charged with a criminal offense if the accused is found guilty. Hence, understanding the difference between two crimes and their potential outcomes is of utmost importance.

What is Assault?

Assault is an intentional and unlawful threat by word or act that gives another person reasonable fear that they will be physically harmed or offensively touched. There should not be any actual occurrence of any kind of injury or physical touch but the accused person must have intentionally acted in a way to cause the fear. Even if a person acts with no intention to harm or if they meant action as a joke or intimidation, their action can still be considered as an Assault.

In simple terms, it means that assaulting someone without actually injuring them is not considered an assault. However, making a threatening gesture or statement is enough to constitute assault.

In R vs St George, the court held that if a person is holding a loaded gun to another person then it will be treated as an assault. Even if the gun is not loaded but the person is holding a gun from such distance that it may cause injury, then it shall be termed as an assault.

What is Battery?

Battery is intentionally causing harm to another person or offensively touching them without their consent or intentional involvement in the action. Where assault is more about an intention and how an action made a victim feel, battery is the actual physical act of harming someone.

In other words, when an accused came in physical contact with an intention to harm the other person, then the offence of battery will be committed.

In Leigh vs Gladstone, the court pointed out that the intention is the necessary element to prove the guilt to the accused. The force used by the accused to feed the hunger strike prisoner to save their life was a valid defence. Any injury caused during the course of action was unintentional and the injury is caused by accident, this accident will not constitute an offence of battery.

Difference between Assault and Battery

Assault and Battery has always been two separate offence and they technically still have separate meanings. Hence, its very important to understand the difference between the two.

Basis	Assault	Battery
Meaning	Assault is an intentional and unlawful threat by word or act that gives another person reasonable fear that they will be physically harmed or offensively touched	Battery is intentionally causing harm to another person or offensively touching them without their consent or intentional involvement in the action.
Important aspect	In assault, physical contact is not necessary.	Physical contact is mandatory in battery.
Purpose	This is done to threat a person.	This is done in order to cause harm to a person.
Nature of crime	It should not necessarily be physical.	It must be physical here.
Relativity	Every assault does not include battery.	Every battery includes assault. Battery is an aggravated form of assault.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Assault and Battery are two separate but related offences. Assault is termed as an attempt to commit a violent injury on another person, while Battery is actually committing a violent act that is physical in nature. Hence, they key distinction between the two is that the requirement of assault is only an intention to harm while battery requires an actual physical violent act.