Definition
An accident or mischance in which a person's lawful act, performed without harmful intent, results in injury or death to another. In legal usage, misadventure almost always appears in the context of homicide: a killing is attributed to misadventure when it occurs incidentally to a lawful act, with no intention to harm and with reasonable precautions taken.
As a category of homicide, misadventure is traditionally classified as excusable—distinguishing it from justifiable homicide on one side and criminal homicide on the other. Because neither malice nor unlawful purpose is present, the actor incurs no criminal liability, though the death is not affirmatively authorized by law as justifiable homicide would be.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An accidental mishap or misfortune.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Mischance; misfortune; ill luck; unlucky accident; ill adventure.
The common meaning is broader and morally neutral—any unfortunate accident, however caused. The legal meaning is narrower in two important directions: the act causing harm must be lawful, and the actor must have used proper precaution. A person acting unlawfully who accidentally kills another does not commit misadventure in the legal sense; that death falls under a different category of criminal liability. Researchers should not read historical sources using "misadventure" loosely (as ordinary misfortune) and assume a legal classification is being made.
Common Confusion
Misadventure is frequently confused with accident as a defense in criminal law, and with negligence as a tort concept. These overlap but are not identical. Misadventure in criminal law means no liability attaches; negligence may attach civil liability even where criminal liability is absent. The distinction between misadventure and manslaughter was the central doctrinal problem in early criminal law: misadventure excuses entirely; manslaughter does not. The dividing line historically turned on whether the underlying act was lawful and whether due care was exercised. A person performing an unlawful act who kills someone accidentally is not guilty of misadventure—at common law the killing might be classified as manslaughter or even murder depending on the nature of the underlying act.
Core Elements
For a death to qualify as homicide by misadventure at common law, courts and treatises required:
1. A lawful underlying act. The activity in progress when death occurred must not have been malum in se or malum prohibitum. This requirement does real work: deaths arising from illegal activity cannot be excused as misadventure, regardless of intent.
2. Absence of intention to harm. The actor must not have intended injury to the deceased or to anyone else. Even general malice toward a third party can defeat a misadventure claim.
3. Reasonable precautions taken. Bouvier's formulation—"after using proper precaution to prevent danger"—adds a care requirement that separates misadventure from negligent or reckless conduct. Failure to take available precautions historically pushed the act toward manslaughter.
Why It Matters in Research
Misadventure is principally a term of historical criminal law. Modern American and English statutory codes rarely use the word; contemporary researchers will encounter it most often in older common-law treatises, colonial-era indictments, and coroner's inquest records, where the verdict "death by misadventure" was a formal finding with legal consequences (no prosecution would follow). Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century criminal law sources should note that the term functions as a term of art with these specific elements, not as a synonym for "accident" in the casual sense.
The classification scheme—justifiable, excusable (including misadventure and self-defense), and felonious homicide—was the organizing framework of English criminal law from Bracton onward and remains the background structure for understanding how older authorities categorized killings. Modern statutes have largely replaced this tripartite framework with graded offenses (murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide), but judicial opinions and academic commentary still invoke the common-law categories when interpreting legislative intent or when the statute is silent on a particular fact pattern.
Corpus researchers should also be alert to coroner's records and inquest documents, where "misadventure" appears as a formal verdict distinct from "accident" (which might not imply a human actor at all) and from "murder" or "manslaughter." The practical difference between a misadventure verdict and a manslaughter finding at coroner's inquest was whether the matter would be referred for prosecution.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in substantial agreement on the core definition but differ in emphasis and precision.
Black's (both editions) and Anderson's rely on Blackstone's formulation (4 Bl. Comm. 182) nearly verbatim: a lawful act done without intention of hurt that unfortunately kills another. This is accurate as far as it goes but omits the precaution requirement.
Bouvier's offers the most complete formulation, adding the "proper precaution" element and explicitly requiring that the underlying act be neither malum in se nor malum prohibitum. For research purposes, Bouvier's is the most analytically useful of the historical sources on this term.
Burrill's is the most historically oriented, noting that the term was "differently defined by Britton, Staundford and West"—a useful reminder that the concept predates any settled common-law consensus and that early English treatise writers were not in full agreement on its contours. Burrill also supplies the Latin equivalent (infortunium) and the Law French form (mesaventure), which aids researchers working with medieval and early modern records.
What the historical dictionaries collectively understate is the role misadventure played in the manslaughter/misadventure borderline cases—where the lawfulness of the underlying act or the degree of care taken was contested. That doctrinal problem generated far more litigation and commentary than the clean textbook definition suggests.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, "death by misadventure" remained a recognized coroner's verdict into the modern era and carries formal procedural significance distinct from an "accidental death" verdict. American jurisdictions absorbed the common-law categories but most states do not use "misadventure" as a statutory term; the concept survives in case law interpreting excusable homicide provisions. Researchers should not assume that a nineteenth-century American reference to misadventure maps precisely onto a contemporaneous English usage.