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THE GREEN BAG

H. Wigmore in the March Illinois Law Review (V. i, p. 501), discusses the following inquiries: 1. Is there a cause of action against the destroyer for the trespass? 2. If not is there a claim for indemnity against an insurer under the contract of insurance? 3. If not is there a quasi-contractural claim against the municipality for contribution? 4. If not does or should a statute bestow such an action? 5. Would such a statute be constitutional? The authors answer to the first question in the negative and contend that an ordinary fire policy does cover such a loss, but that it is usually eliminated by special exceptions. The authors believe that there is a claim against the municipality for contribution on analogies from other departments of the law such as general average, war claims, sanitary measures, and eminent domain. The few deci sions, however, leave the question in doubt and the authors believe that a statute should pro vide such a remedy. There can be no doubt that such a statute would be constitutional. A valuable digest of decisions is also published. POLICE POWER. " Foreign Law and the Control of Advertisements in Public Places," by W. J. Barnard Byles, Journal of the Society of Comparative legislation (No. 16, p. 323). PROPERTY (Boundaries). " Streets as Boundaries in Pennsylvania," by Boyd L. Spahr, American Law Register (V. lv, p. 91). PROPERTY (England). " The ' Mortgage Charge ' of the Land Transfer Acts," by James Edward Hogg, Law Quarterly Review (V. xxiii, p. 68). PROPERTY (New York). " Concerning Cer tain Peculiarities in the Real Estate Laws and Proceedings of the State of New York," by Pierre W. Wildey, March Yale Law Journal (V. xvi, p. 328). PROPERTY. " Notes on Easement of Light in England and Elsewhere," by H. A. DeColyar, Journal of Society of Comparative Legislation (No. 16, p. 298). PUBLIC LAW (Liability of the State in Tort). W. Harrison Moore in the January Law Quarterly Review (V. xxiii, p. 12) writes on " Liability for Acts of Public Servants,"

using as a text, the recent case of Bainbridge v. The Postmaster-General [1906], 1 K. B. 178. The author says this case " calls attention to some defects of the law of England in the relation of the citizen to the state. In that case, the state is carrying on a business — the receiving, forwarding, and delivering of mes sages by telegraph for reward — which in some countries, e.g., the United States, is carried on as a private undertaking for the benefit of shareholders, and which was so carried on in England until a very recent date. The business is undertaken by an incorporated public department, which has been by statute made the successor of the companies whose undertakings were acquired by the state. The servants of the state in the course of the management of the under taking, commit acts which in the case of those companies to which the department succeeded would make the employer liable for tort; but it is held that the immunity of the Crown covers the case, and the person injured is without a remedy against the state or the department. Probably this result could not have been reached in any other country in Western Europe, and as Professor Majtland suggested a few years ago, there are features in our constitutional law which may well give pause to the jurist who, freely classing France or Germany as Rechtsstaat, is considering whether England is entitled to a place in the same category. . . . "In English law we are still engaged in the task of fitting to the state and the govern ment the prerogatives and immunities of the monarch, and of reaching the state through the person of the king. But the great federal systems within the empire disclose a com plexity of relations which cannot find a suffi cient expression in the old-established for mulas of our constitutional law. The mere fact that Canada and Australia have ' rigid ' constitutions, calls forth there the idea of ' public law ' with a vividness unknown in England. Already we are driven, notwith standing the unity of the Crown, to recognize the separate personalities of state and com monwealth. It is becoming apparent also that in the course of the inevitable conflicts between the commonwealth and the states as political entities, and particularly from the