The Classical Law of Tort
Coke's Institutes of the Law, No. 1, Series Editors: Amanda J. Owens & Charles K. Rowley
Extent of Duty of Care
What duties of care were universal? Holmes' fault-based standard gained momentum as time went by. Theories of neglect were expanded to become synonymous with legal carelessness. However, the English courts chose a different track. Rylands v. Fletcher, (1868) an English case decided in the House of Lords, developed a theory of strict liability. The Rylands decision held a defendant liable for allowing water to seep through his land and into the mines of a neighbor without regard to fault.
Strict liability doctrine was rejected by the United States courts in two cases, the New Hampshire case of Brown v. Collins (1873), and the New York case of Losee v. Buchanan (1873). The American cases determined that there could not be absolute liablity to strangers. Brown concerned a pair of horses which were frightened by a passing train and damaged a lamp-post. The driver used ordinary care and skill to try to contain the horses. Judge Doe held that a defendant must be proven negligent before he is liable. Therefore, tort liability was dependent on showing a lack of ordinary care and skill. Doe did not want liability to attach when a superior force controlled a defendant's actions. The Commissioner, Robert Earl, in the Losee case argued that actionable damages arise from accidents involving machinery, dams and railroads when they are a nuisance, and not when accidental, unavoidable damage to a neighbor occurs. Similarly, in City of Piqua v. Morris, (1918), an Ohio case, the plaintiffs brought an action against the City of Piqua to recover damages for its negligence in flooding and injuring their farm when a dam overflowed due to the City's failure to open a spillway. The City was not liable because a property owner must perform his proper duty to a neighbor, but need not render the impossible.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, negligence had become a universal rule, an all-purpose cause of action, and a standard by which to evaluate decisions involving unintentional injuries to strangers. Tort law had become the branch of private law, which dealt with universally imposed duties by the end of the nineteenth century.
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