Demerit

“ To divest a Man of all Property, and then exempt him from a Jail in Consequence of his Debts, is just such a Privilege in his Civil Capacity, as it would be in his Natural one, to divest him of all Pleasure, and in Return to decree that he should feel no Pain. As such Exemption from Pleasure and Pain would, in Effect, strike him out of Being as a Man, so Inch divesting him of all Property, with such Exemption from Payment of Debts, is, in Effect, to cut him off from being a Member of Civil Society. ”

“ For if a knight or other freeman, or a bondsman, or any such person of whatever condition or sex, is bound to the king for any debt—which, indeed, must be a punishment for a misdemeanour, not a spontaneous offering,—the treasurer shall be content with that preferred oath of the sheriff which is to be taken at the end; and the man or woman, the action against whom, by reason of their poverty, has become void, shall again be written as debtor in this yearly roll as in the last. ”

“ If a master neglect to provide food or lodging he may become not only liable to an action by the servant, but also criminally responsible for his neglect, if it be wilful and the effect of such neglect is that the life of the servant is endangered or his health is, or is likely to be, permanently injured.
Payment of wages.—No deduction can be made from wages for breakages or damage to property, in the absence of special agreement to that effect. Wages in arrear may be recovered in the County Court, and the servant, though under the age of twenty-one, may sue in his, or her own name. ”

“ Is a complainant who has, in good faith, prosecuted a suit upon a good cause of action, and upon whose application the court has properly appointed a receiver, and who obtains a decree fully establishing his rights, nevertheless personally responsible for a deficiency caused by the failure of the property which is the subject of the suit to bring enough to cover the allowances made by the court to the receiver and his counsel, and the expenses which the receiver, without special request of the complainant in any instance, had incurred? ”

“ As the case was tried on bill, answer, and replication, it is taking the most favorable course for complainant to determine whether the decree must stand of fall by the averments of the bill alone. But, testing it in that way, we do not see how it can be sustained. The trespass involved in the levy of the distress warrants was not shown to be continuous, destructive, inflictive of injury, incapable of being measured in money, or committed by irresponsible persons. So far as appeared, complete compensation for the resulting injury could have been had by recovery of damages in an action at law. ”

“ The manor court heard cases arising out of the unfree tenures of the lord's vassals. It also heard distraint, also called "distress", issues. Distraint was a landlord's method of forcing a tenant to perform the services of his fief. To distrain by the fief, a lord first obtained a judgment of his court. Otherwise, he distrained only by goods and chattels without judgment of his court. A distraint was merely a security to secure a person's services, if he agreed he owed them, or his attendance in court, if he did not agree that he owed them. ”

“ Personal actions are those that are brought for the recovery either of some duty, or demand in particular, or of damages for the non-performance of some promise or contract, entered into, or lastly such as are brought by a man to recover a compensation in damages for some injury sustained in his person—or property. To give but one or two instances of these last: If my ground is trespassed on, if my person is assaulted, my reputation injured, the remedy is by the personal actions of trespass, assault & battery, or slander. All actions for breach of covenants are likewise personal actions ”

“ The discharge of the debtor is a defense available against a suit on the judgment and against execution process issued upon it. And there is force in the argument that § 94-b, as amended, in truth deprives the debtor of the immunity afforded by his discharge, leaves out of view the public policy of the State or makes that public policy subservient to the private interest of the creditor by affording him the opportunity to initiate, remove and revive the suspension of the license upon terms as to payments on account of his claim. ”

“ Now justice, too, calls for a return for injuries; for, to revert to its earliest and simplest form, when a debtor does not pay his debt, the creditor may exact a substitute for it; the substitute or equivalent has been agreed upon beforehand, and the creditor has a strict right to it—the debtor's property or wife or person may become forfeit. And when injuries become offenses against the community, compensation of some sort comes to be the right of every injured person—that is, under justice also, a second injury follows the first. ”

“ The debtor, we will suppose, by a train of unavoidable misfortunes, fails; here is no crime, nor even a fault; and yet your laws put it in the power of the creditor to throw the debtor into prison and confine him there for life! a punishment infinitely worse than death to a brave man! ”

“ Your fault has entailed distress not only upon yourself, but upon your relatives, people of good name and good family, who suffer as keenly from your disgrace as you yourself. Partly out of consideration for their feelings, and partly because I feel that, under the circumstances, the law will be satisfied by the penalty I shall inflict, I sentence you to imprisonment in the county jail for six months, and a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of this action. ”

“ The loss of the bill by the bank carried with it the presumption of negligence and want of care; and, if it was capable of explanation, so as to rebut this presumption, the facts and circumstances were peculiarly in the possession of its officers, and the defendant was bound to furnish it. Where a peculiar obligation is cast upon a person to take care of goods intrusted to his charge, if they are lost or damaged while in his custody, the presumption is that the loss or damage was occasioned by his negligence, or want of care of himself or of his servants. ”

“ The negligence alleged in the first count is a failure to guard and protect the well; and in the second count such a packing of merchandise as to guide and conduct one to the unguarded and unprotected well. The defendants demur to the declaration, alleging as grounds of demurrer that they owed no duty to the plaintiff; that he entered their premises in the discharge of a public duty and assumed the risks of his employment; that he was in the premises without invitation from them; and that they are not liable for consequences which they could not and were not bound to foresee. ”

“ Congress has defined the tort liability of the Government as analogous to that of a private person. Traditionally, one function of civil liability for negligence is to supply a sanction to enforce the degree of care suitable to the conditions of contemporary society and appropriate to the circumstances of the case. ”

“ The statute of Virginia, under which the action was brought, is, as to the question raised on the demurrer, identical with those of all the other States, giving the right of recovery when the death is caused by such default or neglect as would have entitled the party injured to recover damages if death had not ensued. ”

“ Another objection has been made that the court can make no decree upon these persons which will be just, for it is said every man's non-attendance or omission of his duty is his own default, and that each particular person must bear just such a proportion as is suitable to the loss arising from his particular neglect, which makes it a case out of the power of the court. ”

“ If a bailee, or debtor, be guilty of any fraud in pro­curing the bailment, or of any fault, culpable neglect, or want of good faith in the custody, use, or management of the value bailed, whereby any loss should accrue to the bailor, or creditor, the bailee or debtor will be liable, not on his con­tract, but in an action on the case for damages ”

“ Strictly speaking, these expressions are indicative rather of the degree of care and diligence which is due from a party and which he fails to perform, than of the amount of inattention, carelessness, or stupidity which he exhibits. If very little care is due from him, and he fails to bestow that little, it is called gross negligence. If very great care is due, and he fails to come up to the mark required, it is called slight negligence. And if ordinary care is due, such as a prudent man would exercise in his own affairs, failure to bestow that amount of care is called ordinary negligence. ”

“ That in equity and good conscience the deed ought to be canceled; that the *Page 479 deed is a serious menace and obstruction to their acquiring an allowance in lieu of a homestead, and that if it be canceled, there will be no obstacle to their acquiring such allowance. That they fear, unless the deed be canceled, plaintiffs will be defeated in their application for such allowance, and they thereby be deprived of the value of such allowance by reason of such wrongs and frauds, etc., on the part of defendant. ”

“ To this bill the appellee (the defendant in the Circuit Court) demurred, assigning, for causes of demurrer, that if the taking into custody of the body of the defendant under the capias ad satisfaciendum was a legal discharge of the alleged debt, the complainants are not relievable in equity from the effect thereof for or by reason of any act, matter, or thing in the bill alleged; and if the taking into custody was not such a legal discharge, then the complainants have full, adequate, and complete remedy at law ”

“ Through hundreds of private relief acts, each Congress for many years has recognized the Government's obligation to pay claims on account of damage to or loss of property or on account of personal injury or death caused by negligent or wrongful acts of employees of the Government. ”

“ The legal principle that the State ought to indemnify material and moral injury inflicted by its functionaries, through malice or negligence, on a citizen who has done nothing to subject himself to prosecution or condemnation, cannot be seriously contested. But the whole difficulty is reduced to deciding in what cases the right to indemnification ought to be

recognised, and then to providing a fund out of which the State can discharge this duty. ”

“ On the other hand, where the accident arises from a hidden and internal defect, which careful and thorough examination would not disclose, and which could not be guarded against by the exercise of sound judgment and the most vigilant oversight, then the proprietor is not liable for the injury, but the misfortune must be borne by the sufferer as one of that class of injuries for which the law can afford no redress in the form of a pecuniary recompense. ”

“ The court may mitigate the fine in the case of a first offence, even in a revenue case, or may reduce the period of imprisonment and impose it without hard labour, or substitute a fine not exceeding £25 for imprisonment. A scale is prescribed for imprisonment on failure to pay money, fines, or costs, adjudged to be paid on a conviction, or in default of a sufficient distress to satisfy the sum adjudged (1879, s. 5) . Instead of sending the defendant to prison for not paying fine and costs the court may direct its levy by distress warrant, or may accept payment by instalments. ”

“ If a debtor be merely the bailee of the creditor, a fine imposed upon the debtor by the government, as a punishment for an offence, cannot be satisfied out of property in his hands to the prejudice of his creditors. ”

“ Even under a guard, said an expounder of the law, he had no right to the benefit of free air; "for every creditor has an interest that his debtor be kept under close confinement, that by his squalor carceris he may be brought to the payment of his just debt." ”

“ Whosoever neglects to do his duty in this respect, must not only repay damages, but also makes himself liable to an additional fine. If accidents happen in spite of all precautions, they are to be considered as misfortunes for which neither party is liable, and which the state has to repair. ”

“ Light is thrown upon this distinction between the deprivation of a right and its violation-deprivation being competent to the law-making and law-enforcing organs of a State-by comparison of the language of § 1979, establishing liability for the 'deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution * * *,' 17 Stat. ”

“ The cause is not before us on the grounds upon which it was placed in argument by the counsel of the defendants, except as to the insufficiency of the facts averred in the plaintiff's declaration to entitle him to recover, or to enable the defendants to sustain their demurrer.
A demurrer is an objection made by one party to his opponent's pleading, alleging that he ought not to answer it, for some defect in law in the pleading. ”

“ These cases show that a demurrer, being in its own nature a plea to the action and being even in form a plea to the action, shall not be considered as a plea in abatement, though the special cause alleged for demurring be matter of abatement. ”

“ Since the value of the judgment, as property, depends necessarily upon the remedies given for its enforcement, the withdrawal of all remedies for its enforcement, and compelling the owner to rely exclusively upon the generosity of the judgment debtor, is, I submit, to deprive the owner of his property. ”

“ Such relief is granted to prevent irreparable injury or a multiplicity of suits, or where the injury is of such a nature that it cannot be adequately compensated by damages at law, or is such, as, from its continuance or permanent mischief, must occasion constantly recurring grievance, which cannot be removed or corrected otherwise than by such a preventive remedy. ”