DEFINITION OF UNSOUNDNESS. 5 



injury is produced by the badness of his action, that 

 injury constitutes unsoundness " (Mr. Baron Alderson, 

 Dickenson v. Follet). * Eespecting the case of Holy day 

 V. Morgan,-\ (2nd Nov., 1858), which was an action for 

 breach of warranty of the soundness of a horse that had 

 the habit of shying on account of excessive convexity of 

 the cornea, Lord Campbell, C. J., ruled as follows : — " I 

 am of opinion that the direction of the learned Common 

 Serjeant was wholly unexceptionable, being in effect that 

 if the shying arose from malformation of the eye, that 

 was unsoundness, although the defect was congenital. 

 Although in the authorities cited, the cases of super- 

 vening disease and accident are not alone mentioned, yet 

 it is not from thence to be assumed that the learned judges 

 would have said that if a congenital defect had been found 

 to exist, there would not have been a breach of the war- 

 ranty of soundness, the defect being such as to prevent the 

 animal from performing that which might be reasonably 

 expected from him. Suppose a horse to be born blind 

 or with a contracted foot, surely that would be a breach 

 of warranty of soundness, although the deficiency or 

 defect existed before the animal was foaled." % Wight- 

 man, J. : " If the congenital defect had merely a ten- 

 dency to produce unsoundness so as not to render the 



* Moody & Eobinson's Eeports, vol. 1, p. 299. 

 t Law Journal, vol. 28, Part 2, p. 9,*New Series. 

 :j: I may remark that, when using the expression " contracted foot," his 

 lordship, evidently referred to a foot so malformed, as to cause lameness. 



