what is the difference between assault and battery?

Question

i know that battery is actually touching the person and simple physical threat can be considered an assault, but why do court cases usually refer to assault when person A has already punched person B?
assault causing bodily harm for one is an example...
why not call it battery instead??

Answer 1

I've been an attorney handling felonies for a couple years and did civil law before that and I've been wondering the same thing. I've handled simple battery misdemenors as well as assault with a deadly weapon felonies. Simple battery means touching and assault with a deadly weapon, in practice, means beating someone (with a gun or fists or other body part; it is not necessarily with a deadly weapon).

In civil law, battery means actually touching and assualt means having the intent to cause the apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact and the apprehension of immenent harmfule or offensive contact actually takes place. There are are really no other categories, but criminal law is a little different. Why? I suspect that the term assault meant an attempted battery hundreds of years ago when tort law was developing. Criminal law has developed over the same period but went through a lot of changes in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Tort law changed some, too, but not as much. As such, the term "assault" in regular English went through some changes and was placed back into the law with its changed meaning. But that is just a hypothesis.

Answer 2

Assault is the willful and unlawful attempt, coupled with the present ability, to do harm upon the person of another. Battery is the willful and unlawful use of force upon the person of another. Basically, an assault means you made an attempt to hit, strike or otherwise cause harm. A battery has been committed when that assault is successful. Now, the definitions above are from the statues as they are written in Nevada, where I am from. Each state has different terminology and different categories of each. Refer to the statutes in your state for specifics.

Answer 3

Battery: The intentional touching of another that is either harmful or offensive. The touching can be either direct or indirect contact. An example of indirect contact would be the classic case of Garrat v. Dailey where a 5 year old boy pulled a chair from under an elderly lady about to sit in it. She fell and broke her hip. This was ruled a battery and she won $11,000 :)

Assault: The intentional creation of a reasonable aprehension of imminent contact in another with the apparent present ability to make that contact. Words are not enough to constitute an assault unless they are coupled with the apparent present ability to make physical contact either directly or indirectly.

A so called "assault" by mere words may be better classified as the intentional infliction of extreme emotional distress, but that is an entirely different tort with different elements that must be proven.

Answer 4

It's usually a matter of legal interpretation.

You have correctly described the differences between assault and battery. Most jurisdictions will accept both verbal and physical assault as assault and assault and battery may not always be used to define the offense.

Answer 5

Assault is not necessairly physical (like being verbally assaulted). Battery is actualy physical harm done.

Answer 6

Because to commit battery, you cannot do it without also assaulting someone. Kind of like breaking and entering, one usually has to break into a property to enter.

Answer 7

assault does not involve direct physical contact, battery involves direct physical contact