NOTES OF RECENT CASES Public policy would seem to call just as strongly for the implied right of subjacent support, and in the principal case the implication of such a right is not as inconsistent with the express grant as is the implication of a way of necessity in the face of general covenants of warranty. It is submitted that the dissenting opinion in the principal case was right. Geo. P. Costigan, Jr. MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. (Highway — Automobile Racing.) N. Y. Sup. Ct., App. Div., 2d Dept. — A decision which is to some extent bur dened and restricted by the local statutes involved in it, but which nevertheless contains some prin ciples of general scope, is contained in Johnson v. City of New York, 96 New York Supplement, 754. The Penal Code of New York declares that an act which annoys, or endangers the comfort, health, or safety of any considerable number of persons, or which in any way renders a considerable number of persons insecure in life or use of property, con stitutes a public nuisance. Section 666 makes it a misdemeanor for any person to operate an automobile upon a public highway within a city at a greater rate of speed than eight miles an hour, except where a greater rate of speed is expressly permitted by ordinance. The charter of Greater New York authorizes the board of aldermen to regulate the speed of vehicles in the streets, and provides that the board shall not pass any special ordinance in relation to any such matters. Another charter provision requires every legisla tive act of the board of aldermen to be by ordi nance or resolution, and the form of ordinance is prescribed. The board of aldermen by a special resolution authorized a specified automobile club to conduct speed trials on a certain highway on a certain day, and suspended ordinances regulating the speed of vehicles for that day and place. The specified highway was accordingly fenced in and guarded, many precautions against injury were taken, and on the day fixed the speed trials were held. Plaintiff voluntarily attended the exhibi tion and was injured by being struck by an auto mobile going at a high rate of speed and which for some unexplained cause left the highway near the place where plaintiff was standing. In a suit against the city for injuries so sustained, the first contention of the defendant to the effect that the special resolution conferred authority to conduct the speed trials is negatived and it is declared that the resolution had no efficacy, and that the speed trials constituted a nuisance per se for the results of which the city and everybody else con nected with such trials were liable. It is also held that the unauthorized running of the auto mobile at the illegal rate of speed would as a matter of law be deemed the proximate cause of
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plaintiff's injuries in the absence of any evidence that the accident would have happened had the automobile not been running at an unlawful rate of speed. The last question decided in the case seems to encroach somewhat upon the doctrine that every one is supposed to know the law, for it is declared that the fact that plaintiff was a voluntary spectator of the contest did not consti tute such contributory negligence on her part as to preclude her from recovering for the injuries in the absence of proof that she knew or had any reason to know that the contest was unlawful. NEGLIGENCE. (Manufacturer and Vendor — Mental Suffering.) Ga. — The liability of the manufacturer of an article for injuries resulting from defects therein receives a novel exposition in Watson v. Augusta Brewing Company, 52 Southeastern Reporter, 152, where it is held that a manufacturer who makes and bottles for public consumption a beverage represented to be harm less and refreshing is under a legal duty not to negligently allow a foreign substance which is injurious to the human stomach to be present in a bottle of the beverage, when it is placed on sale, and that one who relying on this obligation without negligence on his own part, swallows sev eral pieces of glass while drinking the beverage from the bottle, may recover from the manufac turer for injuries sustained in consequence. It does not matter, says the court, that the plaintiff did not buy the beverage from the defendant, or that there was no privity of relationship between them, but the duty not to negligently injure is due by the manufacturer not merely to the dealer to whom he sells his product, but to the general public for whom his wares are intended. One element of damages sought to be recovered by the injured person in this case is, however, held to be too remote for consideration by the jury, and while the plaintiff was allowed to recover on account of mental suffering caused from the fear of death while the glass was in his stomach, it was declared that a vague fear after the glass had been removed and he had been apparently restored to health, that at some time in the future he might again suffer as a result of his injuries, was not a proper element of damage. NEGLIGENCE. (Trespasser — Turntable.) Va. — In a case which by coincidence actually in volves a turntable, the Supreme Court of Ap peals of Virginia repudiates the doctrine of the so-called " Turntable Cases." The chief interest in the case, of course, arises from the fact that the doctrine as originally announced in Sioux City Railway Company v. Stout, 17 Wall, 657, and the cases which follow it, has been the subject of such wide discussion and so much diversity
