Court Opinion

ID: 9671549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:38:57.151911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:10.691739
License: Public Domain

Galbreath, J.
(concurring).
I concur in Judge Mitchell’s opinion and would point out that the general law on battery includes the following from 6 C.J.S. Assault and Battery sec. 70:
It is essential to the offense of battery or assault and battery that there be a touching of the person of the prosecutor, or of something so intimately associated with, or attached to, his person as to be regarded as a part thereof.
This touching, however, need not be in the form of a blow but may consist of any sort of contact; it may include every touching or laying hold, however slight, of another or his clothes in an angry, revengeful, rude, insolent, or hostile manner; or the direct or indirect application of force either by the aggressor himself, or by some substance or agency placed in motion by him. Hence it may consist in the beating, striking, or whipping of a person, striking him with a thrown missile, or pouring or throwing vitriol or other corrosive chemical upon him. It may also take the form *477of merely pushing or shoving him, or detaining him, or snatching or -wrestling something from his possession. It may be a battery to strike a person with an automobile, or a horse and buggy, or to drive a horse against him. The contact may have been with the clothes of the prosecutor or with something carried by him. It has even been held that a battery may be committed by striking or seizing a horse which complainant is riding or driving, although there is authority of equal weight to the contrary.
See also Reese v. State, 3 Tenn.Cr.App. 97, 457 S.W.2d 877.
When a heavy automobile is driven into the side of another automobile in which a person is seated, a physical force is applied to that person’s body, sometimes in a devastating manner. In such a circumstance it may be that there is, in contemplation of law, the unlawful touching of the person needed to constitute a battery. Judge Mitchell’s opinion places us in the position of approving this theory; and while I have some hesitation in doing so, I join with him in this logical result.