A Selection of Cases on the Law of Torts

The chief occasion for this edition is the change in the first-year curriculum in Harvard Law School, which assigned to other courses many things formerly appropriated to the course in the Law of Torts and hence treated in former editions. Thus causation is now treated in a course on the Principles of Legal Liability; certain excuses, such as consent and self-defence, are dealt with in that course, and trespass to land and conversion, which analytically might well be treated in the first chapter of this book, have been thought more appropriate to the course on the Law of Property. But the student should be warned that such matters of arrangement do not inhere in the law. They are mere matters of pedagogical expediency. He should bear in mind that the law is a unit and should be on his guard against thinking of it as made up of separate water-tight compartments. General principles which are of prime importance in connection with the subjects treated in this book are dealt with primarily in the courses on Property and on Criminal Law. Not the least important task for the student is to seek constantly for these relations between the subjects studied.

Again, the student should be warned that the arrangement proceeds upon pedagogical considerations and does not seek to set forth an analytical system. System is to be derived from study of the cases. The effort of the student to make one in connection with his summaries for review and his reading of the systematic discussions referred to in the notes will do more for him than learning in advance a system laid out by some one else. Similar reasons have led to omission of subheadings as far as consistent with convenience, leaving it to the student to systematize the main headings for himself. For other purposes an index is offered instead.

In arrangement of the cases advantage has been taken of the experience of the late Dean Thayer, who had given the matter anxious consideration for some years. Indeed the instinct of Dean Ames for teachable cases, the sagacity of Judge Smith in finding significant cases, and the judgment of Dean Thayer in matters of arrangement left little of moment for the present editor to do.