Today in Supreme Court History: November 25, 1757

11/25/1757: Henry Brockholst Livingston's birthday. He dissented in the property law classic, Pierson v. Post (NY 1805).

Justice Henry Brockholst Livingston

Comments

[Noscitur a sociis]

Stop.

[apedad]

Continue.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Yes, please continue. I learn a lot from some of these. The posts themselves are pretty useless, so it's hit or miss which ones I bother to look up elsewhere. This one was fascinating. I had never even thought of when a hunted animal becomes someone's property. Tried to reason it ought before reading of the actual trial and appellate court decisions, and came pretty close, which surprised me. Still leaves a lot of gray area.

If a hunter shoots an animal and wounds it, that can be considered same as working wood into furniture, making the deer his property. But how much of a wound qualifies? What it nicks an ear or tail and does not lasting harm, or misses and startles the animal, and the animal takes off running? Is that now his property which he has lost control of, so he now not only gets the reward of a pelt and meat if he chases it down, but he also gets the liability if it causes damage (say a wounded bear running into a house)?

If the wounded animal falls dead on someone else's property, I figure that's like a kid whose ball lands in a neighbor's yard. The neighbor doesn't get to claim the ball as his own, but neither does the kid have a right to trespass to retrieve it. And so with the hunter, although decomposition and the critters it attracts would change the urgency.

Does merely chasing it count as mixing in one's labor to turn the animal into rightful property?

Does leaving out bait, food or a salt lake or a stock pond, mix in enough labor to make the attracted animals property?

What if a fox is caught in a cage trap, harmlessly (unlike a foot trap), and the trap owner accidentally lets the animal loose while trying to get it out of the cage? Has he now lost control of his property and is responsible for any damage it causes?

Keep these up. The few hits make up for the many misses, whether because I didn't look them up or wasn't interested in what I found.

[Dilan Esper]

This. If you hate "this day" posts, don't read them. But anything that causes some readers to click and learn more about a case, or historical event, or historical figure, is good.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Guy is fox hunting. Just when he closes in for the kill, another guy gets it.

What? He went to court over this??

We were taught this the first week in Property class. Along with Garrett v. Dailey in Torts class, it quickly showed us that people go to court over petty and stupid things.

[Dilan Esper]

I think I remember Garrett. Assault and battery by a kindergartener, right?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes. The first case we learned about was somebody suing a small child and the fact that this might be a cruel thing to do is never mentioned in the analysis. Great way to start off exposing outsiders to the law.