Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/835

 W. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 821 against the outer world for his family, his goods and furni- ture and his cattle." American Must Corp. v. Hendry, 62 L. J., Q. B. 389. His subtle intellect could not have made him the great judge that he was had it not been balanced by good sense. He was continually using the terms common law and com- mon sense as equivalents ; he likened the common law to an " arsenal of sound common sense principles." A multitude of illustrations could be given. One will suffice. In speak- ing of the standard to be used in weighing the evidence as to whether a certain hospital was an " annoyance " to neigh- boring inhabitants, he said : " ' Annoyance ' is a wider term than nuisance, and if you find a thing which really troubles the mind and pleasure, not of a fanciful person or of a skilled person who knows the truth, but of the ordinary sensible English inhabitant of a house, — if you find there is anything which disturbs his reasonable peace of mind, that seems to me to be an annoyance, although it may not appear to amount to physical detriment or discomfort. You must take sensible people; you must not take fanciful peo- ple on the one side or skilled people on the other; and that is the key as it seems to me of this case. Doctors may be able to say, and, for anything I know, to say with certainty, that there is no sort of danger from this hospital to the surrounding neighborhood. But the fact that some doctors think there is, makes it evident at all events that it is not a very unreasonable thing for persons of ordinary appre- hension to be troubled in their minds about it. And if it is not an unreasonable thing for any ordinary person who lives in the neighborhood to be troubled in his mind by the apprehension of such risk, it seems to me that there is danger of annoyance, though there may not be a nuisance." Tod- Heatly v. Benham, 40 Ch. D. 611. No better illustration of the triumph of reason and common sense over technicali- ties can be found in the reports than Bowen's judgment in Ratchffe v. Evans, (1892) 2 Q. B. 529. The Maxim-Nordenfelt case and the Mogul Steamship case are probably his greatest efforts, illustrating as they do all his peculiar powers. For a brief example of clear