Frederick Pollock

“ The Employers Liability Act of 1880 has remedied the most obvious hardships consequent on the decisions, but only by way of particular exceptions, so that the law as a whole, if more just than it was, is much more intricate, and does not appear to rest on any intelligible principle. ”

“ Wilful interference with the exercise of public or private rights may be an actionable wrong, though the competitive exercise of like rights is none; and it is held, though not without doubt, that procuring a person to break his contract for one's own advantage (for example, a singer engaged by a rival opera manager, or a specially skilled workman in a rival factory) is on this principle a wrong to the other contracting party.
With regard to property the broad rule of the common law is that a man meddles with whatever belongs to others at his peril. ”

“ When a servant is injured by the act or default of another servant working under the same employer, the general rule of liability has been largely modified in the employer's favour, on grounds which have neither been consistently expounded nor generally received as satisfactory. ”

“ Nothing can be learnt, of course, from the word itself. It is merely the French word for "wrong," specialized into a technical meaning by a process which was completed only in the latter years of the 17th century and the earlier of the 18th.
The early common law had no theory of obligations in the Roman sense, and hardly any theory of contract. Its remedies were directed either to the restitution of something which the defendant unjustly detained from the plaintiff were it land, goods, or money or to the repression of violent wrongdoing. Only the former class of remedies was purely civil ”

“ Gradually the category of "force and arms" was held to include all manner of direct injuries to person, land, or goods, though the force might consist in nothing more than the bare setting foot without lawful cause on the soil possessed by one's neighbour. But this was still a long way from making room for the modern growth of the law of torts. The decisive opening was given by the Statute of Westminster, which enabled actions to be framed "on the case"—in consimili casu,—that is, allowed legal remedies to be extended by analogy to the forms of action already recognized. ”

“ Again, the occupier of a place of business must keep it in safe repair, for the benefit of customers and others lawfully coming there; and, if harm is done through the want of repair, it is no excuse for him to say that he had engaged an apparently competent person to keep things in order. These arc modern principles in the law, and seem to have hardly yet reached their full development. The doctrine of negligence is also mostly modern. ”

“ Wrongs of the mixed kind affecting both person and property arise from the use of one's own property, or the doing of acts lawful in themselves, in a manner inconsistent with the safety and convenience of others. ”

“ The true principle appears to be that, if under the circumstances the harm suffered by the plaintiff was the natural and probable consequence of the defendant's want of care, the defendant is liable, and this whether the plaintiff, or some third person, has or has not in any degree contributed to the final result by want of care on his own part, or even by a voluntary act, provided that the act be such as might have been foreseen and expected. ”

“ It is held in the common law, and appears to be held in all modern systems, that a master is liable for the acts and defaults of the servants employed by him, provided those acts or defaults occur in the course of the servant's employment, that is, while the servant is about the master's business, and acting with a view to the master's interest, and not for some different private purpose of his own. ”

“ But a man is not generally liable for the conduct of an "independent contractor" a person who under takes to do or get done certain work, but not to be under the employer's control as to the manner of doing it. ”

“ In some cases the breach of such a duty confers a separate right of action upon a person who thereby suffers damage, in others not, according to what appears to be the intention of the enactment. No general rule can be laid down.
In practice, a large proportion of actionable injuries, especially injuries by negligence, are due to the acts or defaults of servants or workmen, from whom no substantial redress could be obtained or expected. ”

“ A great number of special duties have been imposed on different classes of persons public officers, undertakers of public occupations, and so forth by modern Acts of Parliament, and are enforcable by penalties. ”