In Roman law, obligatio ex delicto is an obligation created as a result of a delict. While "delict" itself was never defined by Roman jurisprudents, delicts were generally composed of injurious or otherwise illicit actions, ranging from those covered by criminal law today such as theft (furtum) and robbery (rapina) to those usually settled in civil disputes in modern times such as defamation, a form of iniuria. Obligationes ex delicto therefore can be characterized as a form of private punishment, but also as a form of loss compensation.
Sources of obligationes ex delicto
The core source of obligationes ex delicto is a private delict (delicta privata); public delicts could not form such obligations. Separate delicts existed within civil and praetorian law: furtum, rapina, damnum iniuria datum and iniuria were civil delicts, while metus, dolus, fraus creditorum and servi corruptio were praetorian delicts of note. A person harmed as a result of such delict had a variety of actiones – legal actions they could use as a recourse. Those are generally divided into actiones poenales, used strictly to exact punishment on the offending party, actiones reipersecutoriae, used to demand compensation, and actiones mixtae, a combination of the two.
The actio most reflective of obligationes ex delicto is the first of the three. Actiones poenales were tied strictly to the offender's person and could not be introduced against the heirs of an offender. The victim's heir, however, was allowed to pursue action against the offender, so long as the delict was of a material character (iniuria, as a form of personal injustice, could generally only be pursued at the behest of the offended person themselves).