Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/539

Harvard Law Review Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. Robert G. Dodge, Editor-in-Chief. James A. Pirce, Treasurer. Edmund K. Arnold, Edward Sandford, Roland Gray, Harry U. Sims, Livingston Ham, Clarence B. Smith, Logan Hay, Lloyd W. Smith, Harold D. Hazeltine, J. Lewis Stackpole, Jr., Robert Homans, Charles S. Thurston, Robert L. Raymond, Jens L Westengard. The Harvard Law Review, with the appearance of this number, completes the first ten years of its existence. An Index of all the articles that have been published in the ten volumes has been prepared, and is printed with this number as a supplement to the regular Index of Volume X. Double Compensation. — In the Canada Law Journal, Vol. XXXIII. p. 151, attention is called to a novel case lately argued before the Su- preme Court of Nova Scotia. A, the plaintiff, the owner of a tug^, made a contract with B, the defendant, for a boiler for the tug, to be delivered at a certain time, it being understood by both that the tug would be useless without the boiler. Under similar circumstances, A made a similar contract with C for an engine. Both B and C broke their con- tracts ; A now sues B, and seeks to recover compensation for loss of use of the tug. B claims that, had his contract been performed, A would have had a tug without an engine, and would therefore still have lost the use of the tug; and hence cannot recover from B damages for loss of use. This ingenious contention is evidently unsound. The loss of use having been within the contemplation of the parties, the value of it may be recovered provided it resulted proximately from the breach of con- tract. In this case B's breach and C's took effect concurrently in causing the loss of use, and both are therefore legally responsible. It is evidently no sufficient answer to say that either cause alone might have caused the loss, since both in fact caused it. Suppose A recovered from B full damages, could he simultaneously or subsequently recover the same amount from C, thus getting double compensation ? At law, it seems so. B and C were not joint wrongdoers, but liable each to make compensation for the non-fulfilment of his proper contract duty. The value of the two contracts was the same, the com- pensation due upon breach the same ; and it was necessarily the full 68