Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/772

 EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT time. Legal rights are said to be of two orders: Full legal rights, available ordinarily as a general ground of action or defense, and privileges or merely permissions, usually avail able only as defenses. Legal rights being thus divided and classified, the author dis cusses the effect of intent and motive in determining liability where the actor, in the pursuit of a legal right, has, without using any wrongful means, caused another damage, and states that according to the logic of the com mon law of the nineteenth century and to the weight of authority at present, such conduct does not create any liability, irrespective of whether the motive of the actor be good or bad. While according to the more general ground of the common law, at present, malice or bad motive in the actor will not overturn a full legal right, even though in the pursuit, of this right damage be intentionally done, there is reason to believe, in view of recent decisions in the labor disputes, that common and gradual influences are already at work towards the opposite result. Further evidence of the tendency is to be found in the recent cases denying the right of a property owner to use his property in a spirit of spite or malice toward his neighbor. In the field of permis sive rights, however, as in the tort of malicious prosecution or slander and libel, malice as an evil motive has even in the present law of torts a proper place and will create liability. Pursuant to this line of thought, Dr. Bigelow divides his subject into two parts; one in which the liability turns upon a culpable state of

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mind, and the other in which the state of mind is an irrelevant fact, — liability from an inculpable mind. The first part accord ingly includes a discussion of the torts in which fraud, negligence, or malice is an essen tial ingredient. The second part is concerned with torts involving acts in themselves illegal, such as the absolute torts of assault and battery, false imprisonment, etc., and acts done at peril. In this second part is also included the chapter on " Procuring Refusal to Contract," which has been rewritten. One would expect, according to the author's theory, that this chapter might properly fall in the first part, but as the law stands at present, its treatment in part two is no doubt justified. The discussion in this chapter as well as in Chapter I of the troublesome word "malice " is exceedingly clarifying and help ful. The present edition preserves the terse and lucid style of its predecessors, and is a further valuable contribution in one of the great fields of law. TORTS (see Admiralty). WILLS. " Practical Suggestions for Draw ing Wills," by John Marshall Gest, American Law Register (V. lv, p. 465). Prepared especially for students expecting to practice in Pennsylvania, but justifying the editor's belief " that the legal reader in whatever juris diction he may happen to be, will find profit and amusement in the author's treatment of the subject."