Legal incapacity

“ Whatever is incident to a court of judicature, is necessary to the House of Commons, as judging in elections. But a power of making incapacities is not necessary to a court of judicature; therefore a power of making incapacities is not necessary to the House of Commons.
Incapacity, declared by whatever authority, stands upon two principles: first, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two duties in the commonwealth; secondly, an incapacity arising from unfitness by infirmity of nature, or the criminality of conduct. ”

“ In such circumstances as those presented here, the long-recognized common-law rule permitted no recovery; the decisions to this effect 'rest upon the elementary principle that mere mental pain and anxiety are too vague for legal redress where no injury is done to person, property, health, or reputation.' Cooley, Torts, 3d ed. ”

“ Thus, married women, persons under age, insane persons, convicted felons are under disability to do certain legal acts. This disability may be absolute, wholly disabling the person so long as it continues, or partial, ceasing on discontinuation of the disabling state, as attainment of full age. ”

“ Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 49-50.↑ 'Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any inhabitant of any State * * * to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.'↑ Civil liability has always been drawn from such indefinite standards as reasonable care, a man of ordinary prudence, foreseeability, etc. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The question of whether or not a statute is punitive ultimately depends upon whether the disability it imposes is for the purpose of vengeance or deterrence, or whether the disability is but an incident to some broader regulatory objective. ”

“ The older statute had imposed a penalty for certain offences,-namely, obstructing a claimant in arresting a fugitive from labor, rescuing the fugitive after his arrest, or harboring and concealing him with knowledge that the was a fugitive; and the statute had enacted that the claimant might recover the penalty for his own benefit, and also reserved to him a right of action in damages for the actual injuries he might have sustained, be they more or less. ”

“ The common law allowed no recovery against the employer for the neglect of a fellow servant engaged in a common employment; by the statute the employer is held responsible for the negligence of any of its officers, agents, or employees, even though the guilty person is a fellow servant of him who is injured or killed. The common law denied to one who, by his negligence, had contributed to his own injury, the right to a remedy for the neglect of another which had been a concurring cause ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in such cases the law pries into the mind only to determine the nature and culpability of an act, as a mitigating or aggravating circumstance, and I know of no situation in which a citizen may incur civil or criminal liability or disability because a court infers an evil mental state where no act at all has occurred. ”

“ The nearest synonym for any ordinary case seems to be (legal) "ability," [64] —the latter being obviously the opposite of "inability," or "disability." The term "right," so frequently and loosely used in the present connection, is an unfortunate term for the purpose,—a not unusual result being confusion of thought as well as ambiguity of expression. [65] The term "capacity" is equally unfortunate; for, as we have already seen, when used with discrimination, this word denotes a particular group of operative facts, and not a legal relation of any kind. ”

“ If Congress can create a liability to an injured employee for the existence of conditions in certain mechanisms which he uses, by declaring those conditions unlawful, it may create the same liability for negligence of the agents and imperfections in the instruments used in the carrier's work; if it may change the common-law rule of the assumption of the risk of imperfect appliances, it may change the rule of the assumption of the risk of a careless fellow servant. ”

“ A rule under which individuals claim protection whenever they choose to do so, and when, from the lapse of time, or loss of evidence, they would be injured, were they not to take this advantage. But in these statutes of limitation there are always exceptions in favor of cases of disability, infancy, coverture, insanity, absence beyond sea, &c. But what is the course which an individual would take who found himself protected by a statute of limitation? ”

“ If any one entitled to bring the actions enumerated in this chapter, or make an entry on land, or defence founded on the title to real property, be, at the time such right accrues, within the age of twenty-one years, or a married woman, or insane, or imprisoned on a criminal charge for any term less than for life, he or she shall have three years after the termination of such disability to bring suit, or make entry or defence ”

“ It is enough for present purposes if we conclude that the instant proceedings are remedial and impose a civil sanction. The statutes on which this suit rests makes elaborate provision both for a criminal punishment and a civil remedy. Violators of § 5438 may 'be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than one nor more than five years, or fined not less than one thousand nor more than five thousand dollars.' We cannot say that the remedy now before us requiring payment of a lump sum and double damages will do more than afford the government complete indemnity for the injuries done it. ”

“ The concern of Congress, as illustrated by the legislative history, [17] was the problem of a person injured by an employee operating a government vehicle or otherwise acting within the scope of his employment, situations rarely involving a conflict-of-laws question. [18] In these instances, where the negligence and the injury normally occur simultaneously and in a single jurisdiction, the law to be applied is clear, and no solution to the meaning of the words 'the law of the place where the act or omission occurred' is required. ”

“ Having regard to those provisions and to the general purpose which the act discloses with respect to rights of recovery when the injury does not result in death, we see no escape from the conclusion that the statute contemplates that the employer is to have the same control over the institution of an action for wrongful death, the compromise and settlement of the claim, and the distribution of the proceeds, as he is given in unambiguous language in the case where the injury results only in disability. ”

“ To the latter it very pertinently observed that it was only when the servant had himself been careful that any right of action could accrue to him, and that it was not likely that any would be careless of their lives and persons or property merely because they might have a right of action to recover for injuries received. 'If men are influenced,' said the court, 'by such remote considerations to be careless of what they are likely to be most careful about, it has never come under our observation. ”

“ The theory that a servant is completely barred from recovery for injury resulting from his master's negligence, which legislatures have sought to eliminate in all its various forms of contributory negligence, the fellow servant rule, and assumption of risk, must not, contrary to the will of Congress, be allowed recrudescence under any other label in the common law lexicon. ”

“ By the act of 1623 actions of trespass, detinue, trover, replevin or account, actions on the case (except for slander) , actions of debt arising out of a simple contract and actions for arrears of rent not due upon specialty shall be limited to six years from the date of the cause of action. Actions for assault, menace, battery, wounds and imprisonment are limited to four years, and actions for slander to two years. Persons labouring under the disabilities of infancy, lunacy or unsoundness of mind are allowed the same time after the removal of the disability. ”

“ Why does a judge instruct a jury that an employer is not liable to an employee for an injury received in the course of his employment unless he is negligent, and why do the jury generally find for the plaintiff if the case is allowed to go to them? It is because the traditional policy of our law is to confine liability to cases where a prudent man might have foreseen the injury, or at least the danger, while the inclination of a very large part of the community is to make certain classes of persons insure the safety of those with whom they deal. ”

“ Considerations of public policy must necessarily recognize the significance of comparative negligence as both a statutory and common law precept. The abolition of the ancient doctrine of contributory negligence as an absolute bar to recovery on behalf of an injured plaintiff is the public policy of this state. ”

“ The fourth section provides a penalty against any person, who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or rescue such fugitive from the claimant, or his agent or attorney, when so arrested, or who shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, after notice that he is such; and it also saves to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for or on account of such injuries. ”

“ Inherent, however, in the negligence inferred in that type of case is an act or failure to act by an individual. While the acts of negligence underlying such accidents may reach higher into the management hierarchy than the one involved here, the Federal Employers' Liability Act compels us to go no higher than a fellow servant. ”

“ It is undoubtedly a general principle, that when a statute of limitation has begun to run, a disability to sue subsequently intervening does not stop its running, even though the disability be one of those expressly recognized in the statute itself. ”

“ We repeat, we think the motive and effect of the law is not punishment in the sense of a penal law, but remuneration-'damages for a civil injury.' And a peculiar injury, one resulting from death and its deprivations-deprivations difficult to estimate (and which the common law did not estimate in individual injury and redress) , and, therefore, we think properly within the power of the state-its power to make provision for the controversies and rights that may grow out of the relations of its people. ”

“ When, subsequently, the general amnesty and pardon proclamation was issued, the disability, if any, that had previously rested upon him against disposing of the remaining estate, which had not been confiscated, was removed, and he stood, with reference to that estate, precisely as though no confiscation proceedings had ever been had. ”

“ Gray, was sustained, was defined to be, that when a plain official duty, requiring no exercise of discretion, is threatened to be violated by some positive official act, any person who will sustain personal injury thereby, for which adequate compensation cannot be had at law, may have an injunction to prevent it, notwithstanding the officer pleads the authority of an unconstitutional, and therefore void, law for the violation of his duty. ”

“ But now, since we have judges who are all that we could wish, and yet are not able to plead because they did not appeal at the time, they beg that this disability may first of all be removed for them, and that the lack of energy of the man who at that time was the city's advocate and had the suit in charge may not be the cause of so great detriment to her for all time to come. ”

“ That whenever the death of a person shall be caused by wrongful act, neglect, or default, and the act, neglect, or default, is such as would, if death had not ensued, have entitled the party injured to maintain an action and recover damages in respect thereof, then, and in every such case, the person who, or company or corporation which, would have been liable if death had not ensued, shall be liable to an action for damages notwithstanding the death of the person injured, and although the death shall have been caused under such circumstances as amount to felony. ”

“ In most of the state statutes of limitation the clauses of exception or provisos in favor of persons laboring under disabilities employ terms equivalent to those used in the English statute, expressly limiting the exception to cases of disability existing when the cause of action accrues. ”

“ There it was asserted that by the universal principles of the common law, as well as of the local laws of the states, no right to recover for a wrong committed could be enforced in favor of one who had himself contributed to the producing cause of the injury. ”

“ Every person, however, commits a misdemeanour, and on conviction is liable to a maximum fine of 20, or to a maximum imprisonment of three months with hard labour, who wilfully and maliciously breaks a contract of service or hiring, knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that the probable consequence of his so doing, either alone or in combination with others, will be to endanger human life or cause serious bodily injury, or to expose valuable property, whether real or personal, to destruction or serious injury ”