140 INJURING AND KILLING ANIMALS. 



after notice to depart, use such reasonable force as is neces- 

 sary for his removal. He may use like force to expel an- 

 other's beast from his land, or he may seize and impound it. 

 But he has no right by the English law or our own, when pres- 

 ent in such a case, to destroy life or inflict permanent injury, 

 or use greater force than is necessary for removal or pre- 

 vention." "® So, in an action for shooting and wounding a 

 dog hunting with others in the defendant's wheat field, the 

 court rightly charged that if the defendant used such means 

 to exclude dogs as a reasonable man would, and did no more 

 harm than necessary, the plaintiff could not recover.^"^ But 

 where the defendant wilfully set his dogs on the plaintiff's 

 colts in the former's pasture, without taking any precaution 

 to prevent injury and they were driven into a barbed-wire 

 fence, he was held liable for the injury.^^" And where the 

 plaintiff's horse escaped through a fence which he should have 

 repaired into the defendant's field, and the later driving him 

 back caused him to be entangled in the wires of the fence, in 

 consequence of which he died, it was held that there was no 

 contributory neghgence on the plaintifif's part to bar his re- 

 covery."^ The agreement to dispense with a partition fence 

 is not equivalent to a legal fence so as to justify, in a proper 

 case, the killing of animals breaking in.^^^ 



Where the land-owner is not responsible for the trespass, 

 he may turn the animals into the highway without liability for 

 their straying away.^^^ And he is not responsible for an in- 

 jury they may subsequently suffer without his default.^" So, 

 one who turns cattle out of his enclosure on to public lands 

 whereby some of them die of starvation from want of grass, 



"'Johnson v. Patterson, 14 Conn. i. 

 '™ Lipe V. Blackwelder, 25 111. App. 119. 

 "° Aspegren v. Kotas, 91 la. 497. 

 '" Bullard v. Mulligan, 69 la. 416. 

 "^ Tumlin v. Parrott, 82 Ga. 732. 



"^Cory V. Little, 6 N. H. 213; Humphrey v. Douglass, 10 Vt. 71, II 

 id. 22; Knour v. Wagoner, 16 Ind. 414. 

 '" Palmer v. Silverthorn, 32 Pa. St. 65. 



