ABSTRACT
Language can equally be used to threaten and to menace and when such threats cause damage there can be liability in tort. If one person threatens to commit a wrongful act and this causes loss to another the latter may have an action in tort unless the person issuing the threat can show legal justification.325 If violence is directly threatened this may be enough for a trespass action even if the claimant suffers only mental anguish from fear of imminent attack by the defendant.326 Indeed, any deliberate statement designed to induce physical injury (however slight) will be actionable as a form of trespass, or perhaps under statute, if the person to whom the statement is aimed actually suffers personal injury.327 Lesser forms of intimidation, but over and above normal commercial pressure, is something that can attract, if not always the law of tort,328 then the law of restitution (cf Chapter 11 § 3(c)).329 Some threats are legal of course,330 others may lose their legality if issued by a group rather than an individual.331 And threats to go on strike cause no end of private law problems because English law does not recognise a right to strike, only certain immunities under statute. Such a threat to strike can give rise not only to a breach of contract between employer and employee but to the tort of interference with contractual rights allowing the employer, or some other contractual party, to seek damages or an injunction.332 Thus, if D encourages C not to perform his contract with P, then P may have an action in tort for damages and (or) an injunction against D. This tort of interference with contractual relations is, accordingly, of particular importance to labour and industrial law.
