wrong

The infringement of a legal right belonging to a definite specific person. Kamm v Flink, 113 NJL 582, 175 A 62, 99 ALR 1. In common usage, an act in violation of a moral principle. The word, as the word "injury," in law imports the invasion of a legal right, and to say that a person has committed a wrong, is to say that he has subjected himself to a cause of action. See Eller v Carolina & N. W. R. Co. 140 NC 140, 52 SE 305. Sometimes that may be right in law which is otherwise from a moral standpoint, since there is no wrong in legal contemplation as to that upon which the law's instrumentalities have set the seal of right. Laun v Kipp, 155 Wis 347, 145 NW 183, 5 ALR 655. As the word was used by the fathers of the common law in their saying that for every "wrong" there should be a remedy, they meant a violation of the municipal law, the law of civil conduct, not a transgression of the divine law, as such, nor a breach of etiquette. Western Union Tel. Co. v Ferguson, 157 Ind 64, 60 NE 674. Under a statutory test to the effect that a person is not excused from liability as an idiot, imbecile, lunatic, or insane person, except upon proof that at the time of committing the alleged criminal act, he was laboring under such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or not to know that the act was wrong, the word "wrong" does not always and necessarily mean legal wrong, although it sometimes includes such a wrong. People v Schmidt, 216 NY 324, 110 NE 945.