Legal Dictionary of Pakistan
Quick lookup for English, Urdu, and Latin legal terms used in Pakistani jurisprudence.
trespass vi et armis
[Latin "with force and arms"] 1. At common law, an action for damages resulting from an intentional injury to person or property, esp. if by violent means; trespass to the plaintiff's person, as in illegal assault, battery, wounding, or imprisonment, when not under color of legal process, or when the battery, wounding, or imprisonment was in the first instance lawful, but unnecessary violence was used or the imprisonment continued after the process had ceased to be lawful. 0 This action also lay for injury to relative rights, such as menacing tenants or servants, beating and wounding a spouse, criminal conversation with or seducing a wife, or debauching a daughter or servant. 2. See trespass quare clausum fregit. ( In this sense, the "force" is implied by the "breaking" of the close (that is, an enclosed area), even if no real force is used.
vi et armis
[Latin] Hist. By or with force and arms. See trespass vi et armis under TRESPASS. "The words 'with force and arms,' anciently 'vi et armis,' were, by the common law, necessary in indictments for offences which amount to an actual disturbance of the peace, or consist, in any way, of acts of violence; but it seems to be the better opinion, that they were never necessary where the offence consisted of a cheat, or nonfeazance, or a mere consequential injury." 1 Joseph Chitty, A Practical Treatise on the Criminal Law 240 (2d ed. 1826). "vi et armis . . . was a necessary part of the allegation, in medieval pleading, that a trespass had been committed with force and therefore was a matter for the King's Court because it involved a breach of the peace. In England, the term survived as a formal requirement of pleading until 1852." Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 916 (2d ed. 1995).