There are few more striking curiosities in early English law (and in this respect we find nearly all primitive legal systems closely resembling each other) than the view taken as to the liability for injuries caused by animals or inanimate things belonging to some individual. In early times the principle is that the responsibility falls upon the particular object that causes the injury. If the property, either animate or inanimate, of a man, causes injury to another, such property itself, and not the owner thereof is liable for the injury. Damages cannot be recovered from the owner, but the thing causing the injury must be surrendered. To such property the name "deodands" was given.3 The final disposition of deodands differed in different epochs of legal history; at one period they were given to the kinsman of the party who has been killed, by way of compensation, or wer, at another they were generally devoted to pious uses for the benefit of the soul of the deceased; at a later period they became the property of the crown.4 Deodands, while never recognized in this country, were only abolished in England by statute of 9 & 10 Victoria. As late as 1842 a railway engine which had run over a man was declared forfeited as a deodand.

1 See Street's Foundations of Legal Liability, Vol. 1, p. 49.

2 Volume III, Subject 7.

At the present time it is a well settled doctrine that a man may be liable for damages resulting from personal property owned by him or under his control.