Dickinson, Edmund C.

English

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Volume 38 Issue 2 Article 19 February 1932 The Province of the Law of Tort Edmund C. Dickinson West Virginia University College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr  Part of the Torts Commons Recommended Citation Edmund C. Dickinson, The Province of the Law of Tort, 38 W. Va. L. Rev. (1932). Available at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol38/iss2/19 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the WVU College of Law at The Research Repository @ WVU. It has been accepted for inclusion in West Virginia Law Review by an authorized editor of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact ian.harmon@mail.wvu.edu. WEST VIRGINIA LAW QUARTERLYhis text bears an English rather than an American slant. Hepresents, however, a fair review of what has been written on thesubject and follows it with his own proposal of a comprehensivescheme for compensating those who make scientific discoveries.Appendices contain essays by American lawyers so as to moreclearly tie the matter into attitudes on this side of the Atlantic.Anyone interested in the subject will find here collected in asingle volume sufficient information to let him make up his mindupon the desirability and possibility as a practical matter of com-pensating those working in pure science.In general those having to do with patents and inventions areless than lukewarm on the subject, not as a matter of sentimentbut because the difficulties of working out a satisfactory schemeseem insurmountable. Possibly a Constitutional amendment wouldbe necessary since the courts in the United States seem to havedefined the term inventor used in the Constitution in such alimited way as to exclude those working in pure science whose dis-coveries as such are not immediately practically useful.-KARL FENNING.Washington, D. C.THE PROVINCE OF THE LAW OF TORT. By Percy H. Winfield.Cambridge: At the University Press; New York: The MacmillanCompany. 1931. Pp. xii, 254.In this small volume, which embodies the Tagore lectures for1930 delivered by Professor Winfield at the University of Cal-cutta, an eminent legal historian undertakes "to trace the liaisonbetween tortious obligation and other regions of the law".' It isnot a treatise on the law of tort. It is merely an attempt "toseparate liability in tort as sharply as possible from liabilityarising from crime, from contract, from trust, from bailment,from the law of property, from quasi-contract and from quasi-tort" The author is not the first to attempt this task, but cer-tainly no one has performed it with more care and thoroughness.With some of Professor Winfield's views the reader may notagree. If he belongs to the "pessimistic school" which denies theexistence of any general principle of liability in the law of tortsand consequently has abandoned hope of defining it, he will dis-P. V.'Pp. 2, 3.1Dickinson: The Province of the Law of TortPublished by The Research Repository @ WVU, 1932BOOK REVIEWSagree with the author's thesis that such a general principle isfound in the proposition that all unjustifiable harm done by aman to his neighbor is actionable. In this position the authortakes sides with Sir Frederick Pollock in the latter's well knowndisagreement with the late Sir John Salmond as to the foundationof liability in tort. Likewise, the followers of the "revolutionaryschool" which would class cases of liability without fault undera distinct head, will discover that he finds it unnecessary to sub-scribe to their theory since his broad principle covers cases ofabsolute liability as well as those in which fault on the part ofthe defendant is requisite. In short, Professor Winfield presentsa conservative theory which allows for an orderly expansion of thisbranch of the law without neessitating any change in the presentgenerally accepted classification.The portion of the book which will be read with the greatestinterest, perhaps, is the chapter dealing with tort and quasi-con-tract. In attempting to differentiate these two forms of liabilitythe author has found it necessary to determine first the provinceof quasi-contract. The result is a monograph on a subject whichhas not been accepted as a separate branch of English law and,consequently, has received but scant treatment by English writers.A general historical sketch is followed by a grouping of "the mostconspicuous quasi-contracts in English law"' under the followingheads: pseudo-quasi-contracts; pure quasi-contracts; quasi-contractwhich is alternative to some other form of liability; doubtful quasi-contracts. As a classification this probably will not meet withgeneral approval, but it suggests the difficulties which beset thepath of both teacher and writer in this field and which will makethe task of restating this branch of the law a peculiarly difficultone.-EDMUND C. DICKnSN.West Virginia University.DP. 148.2West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 38, Iss. 2 [1932], Art. 19https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol38/iss2/19

The Province of the Law of Tort

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The Province of the Law of Tort

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