Strictly speaking negligence is not a distinctive tort, but rather a factor which determines liability, and which may appear in a number of different torts.1 To save constant repetition, however, negligence is here treated by itself as if it were truly a distinctive tort. Negligence, as redressed by the law, figures almost exclusively in wrongs which result in physical injury to the body, or forceful damage to property.2 "Negligence may be an element in either an action of trespass or of trespass on the case, if injury is directly done in the immediate performance of a negligent act, as where a carriage driver so negligently guides his vehicle that it runs over a pedestrian or collides with another carriage, the tort comes within the conception of trespass. If the damage complained of is not thus directly done, but follows consequentially, as is said, or from negligence in the creation or maintenance of an agent of harm, as where a carriage is negligently left unguarded and some one is injured thereby, the tort falls under the head of secondary trespass."3

1 "It has been customary to treat the subject of Negligence as if it were a specific injury by itself, instead of merely a question of responsibility liable to arise in connection with various kinds of harm; but this obscures the true situation." J. H. Wigmore in 8 Harvard Law Review, 206.

2 Negligence by telegraph companies in sending messages is an exception to this rule. Street's Foundations of Legal Liability, Vol. 1, p. 71.

3 Id., Vol. 1, p. 71.

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