LIABILITY TO MAINTAIN FENCES. 130 



it as to 'iiititle him to maintain tlic action. Tlic jury found for the 

 plaintiff, aud the Court of King's Bench refused a new trial, and per 

 Curiam : " The plaintiff although receiving the horse as a gratuitous 

 bailee, became accountable to the owner for any damage to it, if he did 

 not exercise a proper degree of care, Avliich he had certainly not done 

 here, and such liability was sufficient to enable him to maintain the 

 action. Having an interest in the integrity and safety of the animal, 

 he might sue for a damage done to that interest, and the same posses- 

 sion which would enable him to maintain trespass, would enable him to 

 bring case against the defendant for the defects and insufficiences of 

 the fences. He was entitled to the benefit of the field not only for the 

 nse of his own cattle, but for putting in the cattle of others ; and by the 

 negligence of the defendant in rendering the field unsafe, he is deprived 

 in some degree of the means of exercising his right of using that field. 

 Whether, therefore, the damage accrues to his own cattle, or those of 

 others, he may maintain the action." 



Again in Powell v. Salisliury, the plaintiff declared against the defen- 

 dant in case for not repairing his fences, per quod the plaintiff''s horses 

 escaped into the defendant's close, and were there killed by tlio falling of 

 a luuj-siaclc. The damage was held not to be too remote, and the action 

 maintainable. Holhatdt. v. Warner was principally relied upon, whicli 

 was an action on the case against the defendant, for neglecting to repair 

 his fences, whereby his cattle escaped into the close of the plaintiff, and 

 from thence into the close of W., who sued the plaintiff' and recovered 

 against him in trespass ; as well as an anonymous case, 1 Vent. 2^1, 

 which was an action on the case for not repairing fences, jjer quod a 

 mare of the plaintiff's went through a gap, and fell into a ditch and 

 was drowned. On these cases Hulloclc B. thus remarked : ^' In Holbakh 

 V. Warner the damage was equally remote as in this case, but there no 

 objection was made upon this ground. In that cited from Ventris 

 upon motion in arrest of judgment, the declaration was held to be good, 

 but no objection like the present was taken. There is no distinction 

 for the purposes of the action between the falling of a hay-stack and the 

 drowning of the cattle in a ditch, for by each the death is occasioned." 



Lialilitij to maintain fences. — Lawrence v. Jenlcins, 8 L.R. Q.B. 274. 

 This was an action brought in the County Court at Newport, in Mon- 

 mouthshire, to recover the value of two cows, which Avere killed by 

 eating the cuttings of a yew tree. The defendant occupied a close 

 adjoining a close occupied by plaintiff. The defendant sold some trees 

 to one Higgins, who so negligently felled a beech tree that it made a 

 considerable gap in the hedge Avhich divided plaintiff's close from defen- 

 dant's. Two cows of the plaintiff''s went through the gap in the hedo-e, 



