Law Commons^™

Mining With Mr. Justice Holmes, E. F. Roberts

Vanderbilt Law Review

All of us are probably familiar with the notion that the owner of mineral rights may owe some duty of care to support the owner of the fee in his or her surface use of the land. This principle results in a binary system (the surface estate and the right of sup-port) that can be treated easily in tort law. In Pennsylvania the coal companies had owned vast areas of land. The companies had sold much of this land, reserving not only the coal, but "the right to. ..remove the same without incurring in any way liability for any damage …

The Attorney's Liability For Negligence, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of negligence was late in developing in the common law. Perhaps the first group of cases in which the idea began to take shape involved the liability of persons who professed competence in certain callings.' One of these "callings" was that of the attorney,and cases as early as the middle of the eighteenth century hold an attorney liable on this basis.

Some Possible New Fields In A Narrowing Act, Ross O'Donoghue

Vanderbilt Law Review

Both Congress and the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, have increasingly tended to narrow the scope of the Tort Claims Act, but within these confines there are certain classes of torts, well-recognized in the common law, which have been little used or totally neglected as the basis for suits. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest some of these and to consider their availability. Of course, such speculation may prove faulty in some cases and overlook others actually available. Prediction in law is a very risky business, so that some of these suggestions will very likely not stand. …

The King Does No Wrong -- Liability For Misadministration, Reginald Parker

Vanderbilt Law Review

The age-old rule of the common law that a citizen may not seek redress from the government for wrongs committed by the latter is often restated in the form of two maxims. One is that "the king can do no wrong." It refers to "wrongs" in the narrower sense of the word, meaning torts and related delicts. It has its counter part if not origin in the Roman-Byzantine holding, princeps legibus solutus est.' Many modern countries and some states have abrogated the rule. The other maxim, "the sovereign cannot be sued without his consent," precludes any law suit, not merely …

The Federal Tort Claims Act And Its Application To Military Personnel, Harold F. Mcniece, John V. Thornton

Vanderbilt Law Review

The background and history of the Federal Tort Claims Act" are well known. Stemming in part from the medieval political theory that the King could do no wrong, a doctrine evolved in English law that the Crown was, in the absence of its consent, immune to suit. This concept became a part of the American common law, and in the main was enforced as rigorously on this side of the Atlantic as in the mother country.

The oft-times inequitable consequences of sovereign immunity in the United States were at first sought to be ameliorated through the device of private legislative …

Actions For Wrongful Death In Tennessee, William T. Gamble

Vanderbilt Law Review

Familiar to most lawyers is the bit of law-lore to the effect that the reason the earliest Pullman cars were so constructed that passengers slept with their heads towards the front of the train was so that they would be killed rather than merely injured if an accident occurred.' Although the reason assigned for the Pullman Company's practice is purely fictitious the logic of the fiction is sound, for the common law gave no civil action for a wrongfully inflicted injury if death occurred before a judgment was recovered, and it thus was cheaper to kill a person than to …

Bases For Master's Liability And For Principal's Liability To Third Persons, Merton Ferson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The law with regard to principal and agent grew up as part and parcel of the law of contracts. The law with regard to master and servant grew up as part and parcel of the law of torts. Each one takes its origin far back in the history of the common law.

Agents were used in an early day to effect livery of seisin, to create covenants, and to carry on commercial transactions. The terms "principal" and "agent" may be of modern origin. But the power of one person to bind another in legal transactions was familiar in the days …