Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/258

 after the breach of duty upon which his right to damages is founded as would suffice, with reasonable diligence, for him to make such purchase.”

This legislation, and the decisions with which it is in line, ordain the only philosophically correct, the only reasonable, the only just, the only consistent rule of damages in such cases. It recognizes and gives full effect to another doctrine supported by precedent and by reason, 7. ¢., that the party injured must use reasonable diligence to reduce his damages to the lowest possible amount. He cannot consistently allow them to become augmented, and charge the wrong-doer with the excess. This principle is frequently applied in cases where a person injured has suffered his injuries to become aggravated by failing to exercise reasonable care. But the rule is of universal application. 1 Suth. Dam. 237, 238, and cases in note; Wright v. Bank, 110 N. Y. 237, 18 N. E. Rep. 79. A person whose property has been wrongfully taken from him may and should go into the market, within a reasonable time, and purchase like property. He owes this duty to the wrong-doer under the law. It is in his power in this manner to place himself in the position, so far as the future is concerned, which he could have occupied had not the wrong been committed. For the loss to the owner of a chance to sell at the highest intermediate price between the conversion and a reasonable time thereafter, or to compensate him for being compelled to buy at an enhanced price, many of the cases impose upon the wrong-doer, in the owner’s favor, the duty of paying this highest intermediate price. But the owner should be granted no greater right, after he has had a reasonable time in which to secure in the market property like that which has been wrested or withheld from him, than he would have possessed had this possession never been disturbed. He should, as to future fluctuations in price, be in no better position than would have been occupied by him had not his rights to the property been interfered with. Had his control of the property not been interfered with, he would have risked loss by depreciation in value, while waiting for a better price. He certainly should not enjoy all the benefits of an advance in value without incurring risk from reduction; and yet precisely this unfair advantage the doctrine of