or Negligent An act of battery must be intentional, reckless or negligent. Thus, not all acts of contact or touch are battery. Contacts conforming with accepted practice or ordinary incidents of daily life are not battery and are not actionable. Thus, for instance, to jostle or push in a crowded bus or sports stadium is not battery. Consent is generally presumed. This is so because, a person is expected to put up with the ordinary hazards of daily life, such as stepping on another's foot, and elbowing when walking on the street. To succeed in a claim for battery in such circumstances, a plaintiff is usually required to prove a hostile intention or negligence. However, it may be battery, if a person uses violence to force his way through a crowd in a rude or inordinate manner. To touch a person to attract his attention is not battery. In Coward v Baddeley (1859) 157 ER 927, in the course of a fire incident, the plaintiff lay his hand on the defendant fire officer to attract his attention. Whereupon the defendant fireman assaulted and beat the plaintiff and gave him to a policeman and caused him to be imprisoned in a police station for a day and afterwards taken into custody after leading him along public streets before a magistrate. The court held that the defendant was liable for trespass to person. A person cannot justify taking another person into custody for merely laying a hand on him to draw his attention, if the touching was not done hostilely. In Holmes v Mather .(1875) LR 10 Exch 261 at 267, the defendant's horses while being driven by his servant in a public highway were startled by the barking of a dog. The horses ran away in fright and became so unmanageable that the servant could not stop them, but he could to some extent, guide them. While trying