Nonsuit

“ The plaintiff bank was the payee and the defendants Broyles, Schmidt & Story, Crossman, Brown, Pratt (alias Anderson) , Lewis, and Evans, were the makers. Broyles defaulted; the other defendants answered, alleging in substance that they had signed the notes for Broyles's accommodation, and had been induced to sign by the fraudulent representations of the bank. Upon the trial, the motion of the plaintiff for a direction of a verdict was granted as against all the defendants except Lewis, and as to him the plaintiff was permitted to take a nonsuit. ”

“ At common law there was a well-established practice of reserving questions of law arising during trials by jury and of taking verdicts subject to the ultimate ruling on the questions reserved; and under this practice the reservation carried with it authority to make such ultimate disposition of the case as might be made essential by the ruling under the reservation, such as nonsuiting the plaintiff where he had obtained a verdict, entering a verdict or judgment for one party where the jury had given a verdict to the other, or making other essential adjustments. ”

“ Now, if you trample on any one, or upset a light vehicle, though you risk, and perhaps break, your own bones, yet you are liable for damages; and this fact is so well known that a suit will be promptly begun against you. ”

“ We do not in the least wish that our particular law-suit should pour its energy into our barrister's games with his children, or rides on his bicycle, or meditations on the morning star. But we do, as a matter of fact, desire that his games with his children, and his rides on his bicycle, and his meditations on the morning star should pour something of their energy into our law-suit. ”

“ It is my duty to put some considerations before you. The suit, if brought, will be a very unpleasant matter for George, a still more unpleasant, even disastrous one, for his people. The innocent in such cases are almost always the greatest sufferers. If the cross-suit is instituted, it will assume at once, considering their position in Society, the proportions of a 'cause celebre', and probably occupy the court and the daily presses anything from three days to a week, perhaps more, and you know what that means. ”

“ A suit might place me in the greatest danger, from my knowledge of the state of the public mind in Coucy, and of what the guilty have done and will do to affect the minds of the people in the seventeen communes concerned in the devastation. ”

“ We should strive to reduce the evil condition which obtains at present to that good order which we are wont to have, because what has taken so many years to acquire should not be lost in one hour." The result was that a suit was instituted against us on the ground that the petition which we presented was disrespectful, and that we were rebellious. ”

“ A third species of real injuries to a man’s lands and tenements, is by nusance. Nusance, nocumentum, or annoyance, signifies any thing that worketh hurt, inconvenience, or damage. And nusances are of two kinds; public or common nusances, which affect the public, and are an annoyance to all the king’s subjects; for which reason we must refer them to the class of public wrongs, or crimes and misdemesnors: and private nusances; which are the objects of our present consideration, and may be defined, any thing done to the hurt or annoyance of the lands, tenements, or hereditaments of another [1] . ”

“ As non-resistance is not identical with absolute passivity, but allows, implies and requires various kinds and degrees of moral and physical "strength," according to circumstances, the term force must not be used as its converse; unless it be with such qualifications, or in such a connection, as will give it some one of its conventional significations, so that it shall mean violence, warlike force, positive vengeance, destructive force - in fine, INJURIOUS FORCE. Injurious force of all kinds and degrees, between human beings, is incompatible with non-resistance. ”

“ But now throughout all the regions of the East one may see the most violent and rapacious classes of men hovering about the courts of law, and besieging the houses of the rich like Spartan or Cretan hounds, cunningly pursuing different traces, in order to create the occasion of a lawsuit. ”

“ Force we may define as physical or intangible power or influence to effect change in the material or immaterial world. Coercion is the use of either physical or intangible force to compel action contrary to the will or reasoned judgment of the individual or group subjected to such force. Violence is the willful application of force in such a way that it is physically or psychologically injurious to the person or group against whom it is applied. Resistance is any opposition either physical or psychological to the positive will or action of another. ”

“ Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly. Until they have been chained and beaten—until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage—let them refrain from saying what they would not do for liberty. How far I should have been justified in the sight of God and man, it is unnecessary now to speculate upon. ”

“ By the virtue of her second-sight, however, no injustice done within the wide limits of her sway could escape her observation; and the disposition of her mind being soft, like the sweet features of her face, she sorrowed inwardly at the misdeeds of her vassals, and the violence of the powerful. She took counsel with herself how the evil might be remedied, and her wisdom suggested an imitation of the gods, who, in their judicial procedure, do not fall upon the criminal, and cut him off as it were with the red hand; though vengeance, following with slow steps, sooner or later overtakes him. ”

“ It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as a dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor one—why, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison or utter ruin. ”

“ What are striped suits which imprint no mark on the body of the wearer, or handcuffs that any blacksmith can strike off at a blow, in comparison with the ever-recurring torture of the white-hot iron with which God sears the hearts and brains of those sinners whose wrong-doing is beyond human retribution? ”

“ II. THE TWO CABS AND THE OVEN. IT falls, I think, to few people to suffer so huge a revolution in life as I had experienced. Here was I—partly, no doubt, as you will justly urge, by my own precipitate acts—an outlaw, a pariah from society, a fugitive from justice. ”

“ I fled from England to escape the condolence of my friends and the raillery of my adversaries. I wished to avoid a lawsuit in which my name—a name of some renown in England—would have been exposed to the comments of a public ever hungering after scandal. ”

“ To be ignorant of the value of a suit, is simplicity; as well as to be ignorant of the right thereof, is want of conscience. Secrecy in suits, is a great mean of obtaining; for voicing them to be in forwardness, may discourage some kind of suitors, but doth quicken and awake others. But timing of the suit is the principal. Timing, I say, not only in respect of the person that should grant it, but in respect of those, which are like to cross it. Let a man, in the choice of his mean, rather choose the fittest mean, than the greatest mean ”

“ Science solved a thousand and one various abstruse, complicated questions bearing on criminal law, but failed to give an answer to the question he had formed. His question was very simple: Why and by what right do some people confine, torture, exile, flog and kill other people no different than they are themselves? ”

“ And as this penal code of ours, which we traverse constantly with searchings of heart, is itself a survival of a time of gross darkness, called into being by unbelief and fostered by error, the acts of the best and worthiest among us are liable to be visited by the sword of the avenger, in other words by justice. ”

“ Their anger was not directed against the regulation of the world, but only against their position in it. Did they recognize the fact that reason refuses to sanction the degradation of men with will and judgment into mere property, like cattle and inanimate things? ”

“ We need not recall the penalties considered most suitable for the crime of religious difference—the rack, the fire, the boiling oil, the tearing pincers, the embrace of the spiky virgin, the sharpened edge of stone on which the doubter sat, with increasing weights tied to his feet, until his opinions upon heavenly mysteries should improve under the stress of pain. When we come to rebellion, the ordinance of English law was more express. ”

“ There would have been no fear that a man, living by his labour, would have undertaken to conduct a lawsuit, from mere motives of vanity; and if he had, he would himself have been the only sufferer in case of failure. ”

“ If it be admitted that this is true, is it nothing to us that a condition exists which necessitates the subversion of any law? Is it not an injury to our people that the occasion exists which places them in conflict with the law, and compels them to assert the existence of a higher duty? ”

“ How I am delighted, that a suit of five talents has been cancelled! Soc. Come now, quickly seize upon this. Strep. What? Soc. How, when engaged in a lawsuit, you could overturn the suit, when you were about to be cast, because you had no witnesses. Strep. Most readily and easily. Soc. Tell me, pray. Strep. Well now, I'll tell you. If, while one suit was still pending, before mine was called on, I were to run away and hang myself. Soc. You talk nonsense. Strep. By the gods, would I! For no one will bring action against me when I am dead. Soc. You talk nonsense. ”

“ Many ill matters and projects are undertaken; and private suits do putrefy the public good. Many good matters are undertaken with bad minds; I mean not only corrupt minds, but crafty minds, that intend not performance. Some embrace suits, which never mean to deal effectually in them; but if they see there may be life in the matter by some other mean, [1] they will be content to win a thank, [2] or take a second [3] reward, or at least to make use in the mean time of the suitor's hopes. Some take hold of suits only for an occasion to cross some other ”

“ That force, which continually impels us to our own private interest, like gravity, acts incessantly, unless it meets with an obstacle to oppose it. The effects of this force are the confused series of human actions. Punishments, which I would call political obstacles, prevent the fatal effects of private interest, without destroying the impelling cause, which is that sensibility inseparable from man. ”

“ Necessary applications of non-resistance The necessary applications of the doctrine are to all cases in human intercourse where man receives aggressive injury from man, or is presumed to be in imminent danger of receiving it; i.e., to all cases wherein the injury of man upon man, is either to be repelled, punished or prevented.
There are four general positions in which human beings may stand to resist injury with injury: as individuals; as a lawless combination of individuals ”

“ When a singleton comes off it may be nice, it is certainly naughty; when on the other hand you have killed your partner’s king, and he has afterwards got the lead, drawn the trumps, and returned your suit, should the adversaries make four or five suits in it, [18] you must not be surprised if he gives vent to a few cursory remarks. ”

“ We will go back again to the old book, and I will ask you, or any minister, whether we read, in either ancient or modern history, of any nation in bondage becoming free without the use of physical force? ”

“ Section 101 For one in high estate, if he fail to make further progress and to disseminate virtue still more widely, and contents himself with slight results, incurs punishment, as having spent a great light upon the illumination of a little house, or girt round the limbs of a boy the full armor of a man. ”

“ I have heard of a lawsuit in France, touching a name that has been illustrious in that country for a period so long as to extend beyond the reach of man—as, indeed, was apparent by the matter in controversy—and which name has obtained for itself a high place in the annals of even our own republic. ”

“ While such as these bordermen lived, an outlaw should never sleep, for he was a marked and doomed man. The deadly, cold-pointed flame which scintillated in the prisoner's eyes was only a gleam of what the border felt towards outlaws. ”

“ The matter-of-fact manner in which the outlaw, who was, even as he spoke, being hunted by hundreds of men, talked of eluding his pursuers and fulfilling his promise, gave the scouts an idea of his absolute fearlessness which they could not but admire, while at the same time his contempt for the Service galled them. ”

“ If law and custom impose upon him acts which he recognises as absurd because they defeat their end, not only will he have the right, but it will be his duty, to defend reason against nonsense, and knowledge against error. ”

“ I will have a file of men on guard, and fire on any creature that infringes upon the vested rights which I possess in my property. I will defend myself," said I, growing warm under the oppressive weight of the law, "and maintain my vested rights." ”

“ Instead of smiting back and giving wound for wound, or going to the magistrate to get thy assailant punished, as the olden sayings authorize, endure to be smitten again and again. If under color of the law thy coat be taken from thee, withhold not thy cloak. Sue not back to recover thy spoiled goods. If men force thee to go whither they will, become their prisoner without turbulence. ”

“ If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat. It is a hard case. Note, It is common for legal processes to be made use of for the doing of greatest injuries. Though judges be just and circumspect, yet it is possible for bad men who make no conscience of oaths and forgeries, by course of law to force off the coat from a man's back. ”