Bodily Injury as the Harm

Bodily Injury as the Harm

The introduction named three components in paragraph (a), and this section takes up the one that fixes the completed offense: the result, which the paragraph describes as "bodily injury to another."¹ That phrase is a defined term, so its meaning comes from a definition and not from everyday usage. Section 211.1 does not define it. The Article's opening line imports the definitions in § 210.0 unless a different meaning plainly is required, and § 210.0(2) defines bodily injury as physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.² The three alternatives reach different harms. Physical pain covers the blow that hurts and leaves no trace, impairment covers something like a sprained wrist or a cut, and illness covers a sickness the defendant brings about. Because the definition asks for no visible mark, no lasting damage, and no medical treatment, pain alone satisfies it.

The definition sits at a deliberate height, and each edge of it has its own reason. The lower edge must be low enough to capture real but modest injuries, since simple assault is the base offense and a hard slap that stings and reddens the skin is the conduct it exists to punish. The upper edge must be high enough to exclude contacts that hurt nothing, which keeps the criminal label on conduct that actually hurts or tries to hurt and leaves trivial or merely offensive touchings to civil remedies and to other offenses. A structural reason also applies. The Code grades assault in tiers, and aggravated assault in subsection (2) turns on serious bodily injury.³ Because a higher tier exists, the base-level harm has to be an ordinary category that stays distinct from it. Paragraph (a) demands only that ordinary kind, and the serious kind belongs to the discussion of grading later in this chapter.

This definition is narrower than the common-law battery most students already carry. At common law any degree of force against the body sufficed, and spitting on a person or kissing without consent counted as batteries even though neither hurts anyone.⁴ In Fisher v. Carrousel Motor Hotel, Inc., a club manager snatched a plate from a guest's hand and announced that the guest could not be served there. The guest was not touched, yet the Supreme Court of Texas held the snatching a battery in a civil suit, because the wrong lies in the offense to the dignity of the person and an object grasped in the hand counts as part of the person. The court also allowed damages for mental suffering without any physical injury.⁵ That reasoning protects dignity and requires no harm to the body. Paragraph (a) asks a different question, whether the body was hurt or impaired, so the same snatching with no pain or impairment leaves the result element unmet, as does the spit on a jacket sleeve in the preceding section.

The trap on an exam stem is the instinct to treat any unwelcome touching as bodily injury. The sorting question is what happened to the victim's body: pain or impairment points toward paragraph (a), while indignity or irritation alone does not.

The completed form adds a requirement that the definition does not supply by itself, which is that the defendant's conduct must actually produce the injury. Paragraph (a) punishes one who "causes" bodily injury, so the usual causation questions arise, namely whether the injury would have occurred without the defendant's conduct and whether the conduct is a close enough cause of it.⁶ A victim who is hurting from some other source cannot supply the element for the defendant.

The attempt clause is developed in its own section below. For now it is enough to see that the result element belongs to the completed form only, and that it is defined by pain, illness, or impairment that the defendant's conduct really brought about.