Definition
Personal injury is harm done to a person's body, mind, or emotions, as distinguished from harm to property or reputation. In tort law, it is the foundational category of damage that triggers liability in negligence, intentional tort, and strict liability claims. A plaintiff who suffers personal injury may recover compensatory damages for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and related losses.
The term operates at two levels. In its broadest sense, it encompasses any non-property harm — including physical wounds, psychological trauma, and emotional distress. In a narrower, traditional sense carried through most historical sources, it refers specifically to bodily injury: a cut, broken limb, or other physical harm to the body itself. Modern tort law and statutory usage have largely adopted the broader definition, expressly including mental and emotional injuries alongside physical ones.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An injury to the body, mind, or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; "injury" was understood primarily as physical harm or wrong done to a person.
The gap between common and legal meaning is subtle but matters for research. Ordinary speakers use "personal injury" to mean a physical hurt — a slip-and-fall, a car accident wound. The legal category is wider: psychological harm, emotional distress, and reputational injury have all been litigated under personal injury frameworks depending on jurisdiction and era. Researchers relying on common intuition may undercount the scope of personal injury claims in historical court records.
Common Confusion
Personal injury is frequently confused with bodily injury. The two are related but not identical. Bodily injury refers specifically to physical harm to the body and is the term used in most criminal statutes and insurance policy definitions. Personal injury is the broader tort law category that may include mental suffering and, in modern usage, emotional distress claims even absent physical impact. Historical sources — including all three dictionaries on this shelf — define personal injury in bodily terms only, which overstates the convergence between the two phrases in contemporary law.
Personal injury is also distinguished from property damage and wrongful death, which are separate categories of tort recovery even when arising from the same event.
Why It Matters in Research
Several navigational traps arise when researching personal injury across the Law Mind corpus.
First, the scope of the term has expanded. Historical sources treat personal injury as synonymous with bodily injury. Nineteenth-century cases and statutes using "personal injury" almost always mean physical harm. Researchers examining twentieth-century and modern materials will encounter a broader category that includes emotional and psychological injury, sometimes without notice that the definition has shifted.
Second, the phrase carries different meanings in different legal contexts. In tort doctrine, personal injury defines the harm giving rise to a negligence claim. In tax law, the same phrase appears in exclusion provisions governing whether a damage award is taxable income — and the Internal Revenue Code's definition of what counts as "personal physical injury" for exclusion purposes is narrower than tort law's definition of personal injury. In constitutional standing doctrine, personal injury (often rendered "injury in fact") is a threshold requirement that is analytically distinct from the tort law concept entirely.
Third, statutes of limitations for personal injury claims are a major source of complexity in civil procedure research. Accrual rules — when the limitations clock starts — vary by jurisdiction and by the discovery rule, injury rule, or occurrence rule applied. A claim that is "personal injury" in one jurisdiction may be characterized differently in another, affecting which limitations period governs.
Fourth, Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference to case definitions of "great personal injury" as equivalent to "great bodily injury" is a useful flag: criminal law sources often use these phrases interchangeably, while tort law does not.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three shelf sources define personal injury in narrowly physical terms. Black's offers the fullest treatment, describing "a hurt or damage done to a man's person, such as a cut or bruise, a broken limb, or the like," and correctly notes that the phrase is chiefly associated with negligence actions in tort. Bouvier reduces the term to "bodily injury" with a single case citation. Rapalje & Lawrence provides no independent definition, directing the reader to case law and cross-referencing the related phrase "great personal injury" as equivalent to "great bodily injury" in criminal contexts.
The consensus of historical sources is clear: personal injury, as understood through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, meant physical harm to the body. None of the shelf sources anticipates the modern expansion to include emotional distress or purely psychological harm. Researchers treating these historical definitions as complete statements of current law will miss a significant evolution in doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. jurisdictions now recognize emotional and psychological harm as cognizable personal injury in appropriate circumstances, but the contours vary considerably. Some states require physical impact or physical manifestation of emotional harm; others permit standalone emotional distress claims under negligence. Statutes of limitations for personal injury differ by state and, in some states, by the type of harm alleged.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Tax: Exclusions — Compensation for Injuries and Sickness (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia, tax_56). The tax treatment of personal injury awards turns on whether the injury is "physical" within the Code's definition — a question that diverges meaningfully from the tort law definition of personal injury.
Civil Procedure: Accrual Rules — Discovery Rule, Injury Rule, and Occurrence Rule (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia, civpro_131). Limitations period accrual in personal injury cases is among the most litigated procedural questions in this area.
Constitutional Law: Standing — Constitutional Minimum (Injury, Causation, Redressability) (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia, constitutional_7). Injury in fact for Article III standing purposes uses the vocabulary of personal injury but operates under distinct doctrine.