Discuss minor’s liability in torts.

 In general, minority is not defence in torts. As to tortious liability of minors, they are liable as adult persons except where liability depends on some special mental element like malice or fraud, or where reasonable conduct is involved. Salmond states there are no rules of exemptions such as exist in other branches of law e.g. ‘criminal law.

He observed- Thus a child of any age may be sued for trespass or conversion, and will be held liable in damages just as if he were an adult. The youth of the defendant is not however in all cases wholly irrelevant. For it may be evidence of the absence of the particular mental stale which is an essential element in the kind of tort in question.

Thus, if an action is based on malice or on some special intent, the fact that the defendant is extremely young is relevant as tending to disprove the existence of any such malice or intent. Similarly, it would seem that in order to make a child liable for negligence, it must be proved that he failed to show the amount of care reasonably to be expected from a child of that age.

It is not enough that an adult would have been guilty of negligence had he acted in the same way in the same circumstances. This, indeed, seems never to have been decided, but it would seem implied in the decisions on the contributory negligence of children. In general the principle appears to be that a minor who is incapable of forming a culpable intention or of realising the probable consequences of his conduct is relieved from liability in those cases in which fault is essential to liability, but that wherever a liability is imposed irrespective of fault he is fully liable as a normal adult.

In Walmsley v. Humenick, (1954) 2 D.L.R. 232 the Supreme Court of British Columbia held that the defendant, a child of five years, could not be held liable for negligence because he had not reached that stage of mental development where it could be said that he should be found legally responsible for his negligent acts.

In Ballet v. Mingay, (1943) K.B. 281 a minor hired a microphone and an amplifier and improperly passed it to a friend. The infant was held liable for detinue.