Non Feasance

The expressions misfeasance and nonfeasance, and occasionally malfeasance, are used in English law with reference to the discharge of public obligations existing by common law, custom or statute.Misfeasance is determined in relation to privity of contract. When a contract creates a duty that does not exist at common law, the parties can do one of three things: (1) perform the duty fully; (2) perform the duty inadequately or poorly; or (3) fail to perform the duty at all. When a party fails to perform at all, it is nonfeasance. When a party performs the duty inadequately or poorly, it is misfeasance. Malfeasance is used to denote outright sabotage which causes intentional damage.
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(n.)
An omission or neglect to do something, esp. that which ought to have been done. Cf. Malfeasance.
  

The non-performance of some act which ought to be performed.

When a legislative act requires a person to do a thing, its non feasance will subject the party to punishment; as, if a statute require the supervisors of the highways to repair such highways, the neglect to repair them may be punished.

Mere non-feasance does not imply malice; this is strongly exemplified in the case of a plaintiff, who, having issued a writ of capias against his debtor, afterwards received the debt, and neglected to countermand the writ, in consequence of which the defendant was afterwards arrested. On a suit brought by the former defendant against the former plaintiff, it was held that the law did not impose on the first plaintiff the duty of countermanding his writ. If he had refused to give the countermand when requested, it might have been evidence of malice, but in such case there would have been something beyond mere non-feasance, an actual refusal.

There is a difference between nonfeasance and misfeasance, or malfeasance.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.