Requirements in Relation to Intention

Intention needs some lines to itself. It is always difficult. In this delict, especially. The bald statements that iniuria requires intent or cannot be committed unintentionally are true but not simple.

Every would-be plaintiff in an actio iniuriarum has suffered some material or psychological harm. That is what he wants to complain about. Sometimes the defendant has not intended the act or omission which the plaintiff claims to have caused the harm. He was struck in the face by my arm but my arm was pushed by a third party; or, driving all night, I fell asleep and was carried into him. Where the defendant did not intend the act in question there is no possibility of liability for iniuria. Sometimes the defendant has intended the act but has not intended the harmful consequence. I swung my golf-club intending precisely the curve which it followed. I did it again, but you have come up behind me. It cost you two teeth. There I intended no harmful consequence at all, though I intended all the movement of my body and the club. There is another version. A schoolmaster is teaching a boy whose work is badly done. The master, holding a biro, intends to accompany his reproof with a jab to the back of the head. At the crucial moment the boy turns round and takes the biro in his eye. The master intended the act and some small harm but not this blinded eye. I shall come back to the schoolmaster. In the third type of case the defendant has intended the act and the harmful consequence but can say that he would not have intended them if he had known some fact which he did not know. That is, if he had not been labouring under a mistake. This is the case of Oedipus. He intended to sleep with Jocasta, not his mother. He intended to kill the stranger who barred his way, not his father. Had he known the woman was his mother and the man his father, he would not have formed the intentions which he did form in relation to them.

All the cases considered so far have involved defendants who could plausibly say that they had not intended the harm to the plaintiff, albeit in the Oedipus case that has to be rewritten as �would not have intended if'.

A defendant may say that he did intend the harm but for a laudable reason. Will his excellent ulterior purpose exonerate him? The answer is, it will if the event as a whole is then transformed into one of which the law and boni mores approve.

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