A Selection of Cases on the Law of Torts

by Unknown

Denman, J. This case was tried before me and a special jury at the last Maidstone Summer Assizes.[^[39]]

In the statement of claim the plaintiff alleged that the defendant had negligently and wrongfully and unskilfully fired his gun and wounded the plaintiff in his eye, and that the plaintiff, in consequence, had lost his sight and suffered other damage. The defendant denied the negligence alleged. After the evidence on both sides, which was conflicting, had been heard, I left the three following questions to the jury: 1. Was the plaintiff injured by a shot from defendant’s gun? 2. Was the defendant guilty of negligence in firing the charge to which that shot belonged as he did? 3. Damages.

The undisputed facts were, that on Nov. 29, 1888, the defendant and several others were pheasant shooting in a party, some being inside and some outside of a wood which the beaters were beating. The right of shooting was in one Greenwood, who was of the party. The plaintiff was employed by Greenwood to carry cartridges and the game which might be shot. Several beaters were driving the game along a plantation of saplings towards an open drive. The plaintiff stood just outside a gate which led into a field outside the plantation, at the end of the drive. The defendant was walking along in that field a few yards from the hedge which bounded the plantation. As he was walking along a pheasant rose inside the plantation; the defendant fired one barrel at this bird, and, according to the evidence for the defendant, struck it with his first shot. There was a considerable conflict of evidence as to details; but the jury must, I think, be taken to have adopted the version of the facts sworn to by the defendant’s witnesses. They swore that the bird, when struck by the first shot, began to lower and turn back towards the beaters, whereupon the defendant fired his second barrel and killed the bird, but that a shot, glancing from the bough of an oak which was in or close to the hedge, and, striking the plaintiff, must have caused the injury complained of. The oak in question, according to the defendant’s evidence, was partly between the defendant and the bird when the second barrel was fired, but it was not in a line with the plaintiff, but, on the contrary, so much out of that line, that the shot must have been diverted to a considerable extent from the direction in which the gun must have been pointed in order to hit the plaintiff. The distance between the plaintiff and the defendant, in a direct line, when the second barrel was fired, was about thirty yards. The case for the plaintiff was entirely different; but I think it must be held that the jury took the defendant’s account of the matter, for they found the second question left to them in the negative. Before summing up the case to the jury, I called the attention of the parties to the doctrine which seemed to have been laid down in some old cases—that, even in the absence of negligence, an action of trespass might lie; and it was agreed that I should leave the question of negligence to the jury, but that, if necessary, the pleadings were deemed to have been amended so as to raise any case or defence open upon the facts with liberty to the court to draw inferences of fact, and that the damages should be assessed contingently. The jury assessed them at £100. I left either party to move the court for judgment; but it was afterwards agreed that the case should be argued before myself on further consideration, and that I should give judgment, notwithstanding that I had left the parties to move the court, as though I had originally reserved it for further consideration before myself.

Having heard the arguments, I am of opinion that, by no amendment that could be made consistently with the finding of the jury could I properly give judgment for the plaintiff. It was contended on his behalf that this was a case in which an action of trespass would have lain before the Judicature Acts; and this contention was mainly founded on certain dicta which, until considered with reference to those cases in which they are uttered, seem to support that contention; but no decision was quoted, nor do I think that any can be found which goes so far as to hold, that if A. is injured by a shot from a gun fired at a bird by B., an action of trespass will necessarily lie, even though B. is proved to have fired the gun without negligence and without intending to injure the plaintiff or to shoot in his direction.

The jury having found that there was no negligence on the part of the defendant, the most favorable way in which it is now possible to put the case for the plaintiff is to consider the action as brought for a trespass, and to consider that the defendant has put upon the record a defence denying negligence, and specifically alleging the facts, sworn to by his witnesses, which the jury must be considered to have found proved, and then to consider whether those facts, coupled with the absence of negligence established by the jury, amount to an excuse in law.

The earliest case relied upon by the plaintiff was one in the year-book 21 Hen. 7, 28 A., which is referred to by Grose, J., in the course of the argument in Leame v. Bray, 3 East, 593, to be mentioned presently, in these words: “There is a case put in the year-book, 21 Hen. 7, 28 A., that where one shot an arrow at a mark which glanced from it and struck another, it was holden to be trespass.” Returning to the case in the year-book, it appears that the passage in question was a mere dictum of Rede, who (see 5 Foss’ Lives of the Judges, p. 230) was at the time (1506) either a judge of the King’s Bench or C. J. of the Common Pleas, which he became in October in that year, in a case of a very different kind from that in question, and it only amounts to a statement that an action of trespass may lie even where the act done by the defendant is unintentional. The words relied on are, “Mes ou on tire a les buts et blesse un home, coment que est incontre sa volonte, il sera dit un trespassor incontre son entent.” But in that very passage Rede makes observations which show that he has in his mind cases in which that which would be prima facie a trespass may be excused. The next case in order of date relied upon for the plaintiff was Weaver v. Ward, decided in 1607. There is no doubt that that case contains dicta which per se would be in favor of the plaintiff, but it also contains the following summing up of the law applicable to cases of unintentional injury by acts which are prima facie trespasses: “Therefore, no man shall be excused of a trespass ... except it may be judged utterly without his fault,” showing clearly that there may be such cases. That case, after all, only decided that where the plaintiff and defendant were skirmishing as soldiers of the train-band, and the one, “casualiter, et per infortunium, et contra voluntatem suam” (which must be translated “accidentally and involuntarily”) shot the other, an action of trespass would lie, unless he could show that such involuntary and accidental shooting was done under such circumstances as utterly to negative negligence. Such cases may easily be supposed, in which there could be no two opinions about the matter; but other cases may, as the present case did, involve considerable conflicts of evidence and opinion which until recently a jury only could dispose of. The case of Gibbons v. Pepper, 4 Mod. 405, decided in 1695, merely decided that a plea merely showing that an accident caused by a runaway horse was inevitable, was a bad plea in an action of trespass, because, if inevitable, that was a defence under the general issue. It was a mere decision on the pleading, and laid down nothing as regards the point raised in the present case. The concluding words of the judgment, which show clearly the ratio decidendi of that case, are these: “He should have pleaded the general issue, for if the horse ran away against his will he would have been found not guilty, because in such a case it cannot be said with any color of reason to be a battery in the rider.” The more modern cases of Wakeman v. Robinson and Hall v. Fearnley, lay down the same rule as regards the pleading point, though the former case may also be relied upon as an authority by way of dictum in favor of the plaintiff, and the latter may be fairly relied upon by the defendant; for Wightman, J., in his judgment explains Wakeman v. Robinson thus: “The act of the defendant” (viz., driving the cart at the very edge of a narrow pavement on which the plaintiff was walking, so as to knock the plaintiff down) “was prima facie unjustifiable, and required an excuse to be shown. When the motion in this case was first made, I had in my recollection the case of Wakeman v. Robinson. It was there agreed that an involuntary act might be a defence on the general issue. The decision indeed turned on a different point; but the general proposition is laid down. I think the omission to plead the defence here deprived the defendant of the benefit of it, and entitled the plaintiff to recover.”

But in truth neither case decides whether, where an act such as discharging a gun is voluntary, but the result injurious without negligence, an action of trespass can nevertheless be supported as against a plea pleaded and proved, and which the jury find established, to the effect that there was no negligence on the part of the defendant.

The case of Underwood v. Hewson, 1 Str. 596, decided in 1724, was relied on for the plaintiff. The report is very short. “The defendant was uncocking a gun, and the plaintiff standing to see it, it went off and wounded him; and at the trial it was held that the plaintiff might maintain trespass—Strange pro defendente.” The marginal note in Nolan’s edition of 1795, not necessarily Strange’s own composition, is this: “Trespass lies for an accidental hurt;” and in that edition there is a reference to Buller’s N. P., p. 16. On referring to Buller, p. 16, where he is dealing with Weaver v. Ward, I find he writes as follows: “So (it is no battery) if one soldier hurt another in exercise; but if he plead it he must set forth the circumstances, so as to make it appear to the court that it was inevitable, and that he committed no negligence to give occasion to the hurt, for it is not not enough to say that he did it casualiter, et per infortunium, et contra voluntatem suam; for no man shall be excused of a trespass, unless it be justified entirely without his default: Weaver v. Ward; and, therefore, it has been holden that an action lay where the plaintiff standing by to see the defendant uncock his gun was accidentally wounded: Underwood v. Hewson.” On referring back to Weaver v. Ward, I can find nothing in the report to show that the court held, that in order to constitute a defence in the case of a trespass it is necessary to show that the act was inevitable. If inevitable, it would seem that there was a defence under the general issue; but a distinction is drawn between an act which is inevitable and an act which is excusable, and what Weaver v. Ward really lays down is that “no man shall be excused of a trespass except it may be judged utterly without his fault.”

Day v. Edwards, D. & E. 5 T. R. 648 (1794), merely decides that where a man negligently drives a cart against the plaintiff’s carriage, the injury being committed by the immediate act complained of, the remedy must be trespass, and not case.

But the case upon which most reliance was placed by the plaintiff’s counsel was Leame v. Bray, 3 East, 593. That was an action of trespass in which the plaintiff complained that the defendant with force and arms drove and struck a chaise which he was driving on the highway against the plaintiff’s curricle, which the plaintiff’s servant was driving, by means whereof the servant was thrown out, and the horses ran away, and the plaintiff, who jumped out to save his life, was injured. The facts stated in the report include a statement that “the accident happened in a dark night, owing to the defendant driving his carriage on the wrong side of the road, and the parties not being able to see each other; and that if the defendant had kept his right side there was ample room for the carriages to have passed without injury.” The report goes on to state: “But it did not appear that blame was imputable to the defendant in any other respect as to the manner of his driving. It was therefore objected for the defendant, that the injury having happened from negligence and not wilfully, the proper remedy was by an action on the case, and not of trespass vi et armis; and the plaintiff was thereupon nonsuited.” On the argument of the rule to set aside the verdict the whole discussion turned upon the question whether the injury was, as put by Lawrence, J., at p. 596 of the report, immediate from the defendant’s act, or consequential only from it, and in the result the nonsuit was set aside. But it clearly appears from the report that there was evidence upon which the jury might have found negligence, and indeed the defendant’s counsel assumed it in the very objection which prevailed with Lord Ellenborough when he nonsuited the plaintiff. There is nothing in any of the judgments to show that if in that case a plea had been pleaded denying any negligence, and the jury had found that the defendant was not guilty of any negligence, but (for instance) that the accident happened wholly through the darkness of the night making it impossible to distinguish one side of the road from the other and without negligence on either side, the court would have held that the defendant would have been liable either in trespass or in case.