Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 11:14

From: Ken Oliphant

Subject: Lost quote

Yes, Cave comes immediately to mind ... But he thought that there was a right to trade (or as he put it at various points of his opinion, "a right to carry on his trade without hindrance or disturbance" or "a right to carry on his business without disturbance").

On the facts, Cave concluded that there should be liability because: "Allen, in inducing their employers to dismiss the respondents from their employment, was guilty of a violation of their right to freely dispose of their labour without molestation".

So Cave comes to the opposite conclusion from that Jason was thinking of.

Ken

--On 08 November 2007 09:01 +0000 Robert Stevens wrote:

Could it be

"The personal rights with which we are most familiar are 1. Rights of reputation; 2. Rights of bodily safety and freedom; 3. Rights of property".

Allen v Flood [1898] 1 AC 1, 29 per Cave J.?

Cited as "unusually discriminating and instructive" by WN Hohfeld "Some Fundamental Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning" (1913) 23 Yale LJ 16, 41.

Cave J never became an important judge, indeed I think he was dead by the time of final judgment in Allen v Flood. He wrote the fifth, and by far the best, edition of Addison's Wrongs and Their Remedies, Being a Treatise on the Law of Torts. (If anyone has a copy of this edition, I'd love to buy it.) The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography portrays Cave as quite a difficult judge to appear before, "not suffering fools gladly".

The above quote is the first one I give at the start of my book (you can read the six pages which include the quote on Amazon).

The House of Lords subsequent decision in Quinn v Leathem is rather difficult to square with Cave J's opinion of course. But then, it is wrong.

----------------------
Ken Oliphant, CSET Reader in Tort, School of Law, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ.

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