The Green Bag
508
potestative right in the pauper such as a master would have in his servant, the only right of his which was violated was the right of pecuniary condition, to which the duty broken, the above mentioned duty as to direct acts, does not correspond. If the defendant had beaten the pauper with a malicious
intent to cause the plaintiff expense,
If B was not there, A would owe no duty at all not to shoot at the target, because what is reasonable, and there fore what is negligent, depends upon the facts of the situation as knovm to the party.
But B's being there, as A
knows, does raise a duty not to shoot. If A does shoot, misses B but hits C, does he commit any breach of duty as
it is believed that he would have been
against C?
liable; he would have broken the duty as to malicious acts, which does corre spond to that right.
that, as it seems to me, really should
There are many decisions
Correspondence in genere, the duty’s
deduced from them by analysis and
turn on this point of correspondence in specie, and the rules which can be
being of a kind that corresponds to the
comparison are somewhat complicated.
kind of right violated, is a very simple
Smith v. London <9‘ 5. W. Ry. Co., L. R. 5 C. P. 98, 30 L. J. C. P. 68, L. R. 6 C. P. 14, 40 L. J. C. P. 21, is a good example of a case which ought to have been decided on this ground; but in
matter.
In a system of law the defini
tion of each duty should be accom
panied by a statement of what rights it corresponds to.
But a much more
difficult question arises of what may
fact the court was confused over it,
be called correspondence in specie. Definitions of duties are necessarily in general terms, e.g., the above-men
not clearly perceiving the point.
tioned duty not to do negligent acts. But when a person comes to act in the circumstances of a particular case, that general duty takes the form of a duty
not to do some specific act because of the probability of causing some specific harm. To what specific right or rights, belonging to the class of rights to which it corresponds ‘in genere, does the duty in that specific case and form
correspond? If A is practising rifle shooting, and B is standing in front of the target, the duty not to do negli
gent acts actualizes itself as a duty not to shoot in that direction, and undoubtedly corresponds in specie to B's right of bodily security and is owed in specie to B. But if C is lying in the long grass behind the target where A will probably hit him if he shoots, A
When a complete wrong has been committed, further violations of right, dehors the wrong and additional to it,
may occur. These are consequential damages, which must be distinguished from the wrong itself.
A recovery may
be had for consequential damage in an action for the wrong; but no action lies for consequential damage only. The rule of actuality and proximateness causation applies to consequential damage, but not the rule of the corre
spondence between the duty and the right. In an action for an assault and battery, for example, the expenses of getting cured may be recovered for, though
the
duty
broken
does
not
correspond to the right of pecuniary condition. Those three conceptions, right, duty and wrong, seem to me to be the founda
tion on which any scientific and durable
not knowing that any one is there, does
arrangement
A’s duty, in its specific form as a duty not to shoot, correspond to C's right?
Descriptions of the states of fact which the law protects and the acts which
of the law must
rest.
