CHATTELS FORFEITED

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3214, 9 August 1932, Page 7

CHATTELS FORFEITED

INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH

THE LAW IN THE OLD DAYS. Apropos of the recent commentfrom the Supreme Court bench in a case where there had been a kil kig, it is of interest to know (says the Wellington Even-'ng Post) that in bygone years a chattel found to have caused the death of any person was forfeited to the Crown. Dealing with this subject in his book on the Crimes Act, 1908, Professor Garx-ow sets out that the old law was that any chattel found by a jury to have been the immediate cause of the death of a person, whether by accident or by design war, a deodand (to be given to God), and was forfeited to the Crown to be devoted to p'ous uses. For example, if a man were run over by a cart and killed, the cart was forfeited as a deodand; so also if a tree fell on a man, or a horse threw his rider and the man were killed, or if an ox gored a man and killed him, or if a person fell from a boat and was drowned. The chattel was valued by the coroner’s jury, and the township where the death occurred was held responsible to the officers of the Crown for the value. Deodands were abolished in 1846. Reference is made in the book to an interesting case illustrating the old law as to deodands, which was decided in 1388. In a tin mine in Cornwall a mass of earth fell upon a man and killed him. In the belief that the whole mine should be forfeited, the King (Richard II.) gave it to two of the officers of his household. The inquest had found that the death was caused by the falling of a certain mass of earth. “ This matter was a long time debated between the Sergeants and the Justices and apprentices as well, and at the last it was decided that the grant should be repealed and that nothing should be forfeited except the mass of earth tha’t fell.”

Operation of the law as to deodands in modern times would mean that the law would probably have a number of motor cars on its hands.