244 



LIVEHT-STABLE KEEPERS, AGISTERS, ETC. 



Lending for 

 use. 



Duties of 

 borrower and 

 lender. 



Lender of a 

 horse. 



Must not 



conceal 



defects. 



What care is 

 required. 



As much as 

 the borrower 

 is capable of 

 bestowing. 



Borrowing Horses. 



Lending for use is a bailment of a thing for a certain 

 time when used by the borroiver without paying for it {a). 



The duties of the borrower and lender are thus well laid 

 down by Mr. Justice Coleridge in Blachnore v. Bristol ami 

 Exeter Railway Company (b) : — " The duties of the lender 

 and borroiver are in some degree correlative. The lender 

 must be taken to lend for the purpose of a beneficial use by 

 the borrower; the borrower thereiore is not responsible for 

 reasonable wear and tear; but he is for negligence, for 

 misuse, for gross want of skill in the use, above all, for 

 anything which may be defined as legal fraud. So, on the 

 other hand, as the lender lends for beneficial use, he must 

 be responsible for defects in the chattel, with reference to 

 the use for which he knows the loan is accepted, of which 

 he is aware, and owing to which directly the borrower is 

 injured." 



" Would it not be monstrous to hold, that if the owner 

 of a horse, knowing it to be vicious and unmanageable, 

 should lend it to one ignorant of its bad qualities, and 

 conceal them from him, and the rider, using ordinary care 

 and skill, is thrown from it and injured, he should not be 

 responsible." 



" By the necessarily implied purpose of the loan a duty 

 is contracted towards the borrower not to conceal from him 

 those defects, known to the lender, which may make the 

 loan perilous or unprofitable to him." 



In contracts from which a benefit accrues only to him 

 who has the goods in his custody, as in that of lending for 

 use, an extraordinary degree of care is demanded, and the 

 borroiver is therefore responsible for slight negHgence (c). 



But if the lender was not deceived, but perfectly knew 

 the quality as well as age of the borroiver, he must be sup- 

 posed to have demanded no higher care than that of which 

 such a person was capable ; as if a person lend a fine horse 

 to a raw youth, he cannot exact the same degree of manage- 

 ment and circumspection as he would expect from a riding- 

 master or an ofiicer of dragoons {d). 



{a) Jones on Bailments, 118. 



(b) Blaekmore v. Bristol ^ Exeter 

 Rail. Co., 27 L. J., Q. B. 167. See 

 also McCarthy v. Young, 3 L. T., 

 N. S. 785. 



(«) Jones on Bailments, 65. See 



Exod. xxii. li, 15. 



(d) Jones on Bailments, 65; 

 Dumoulin's Tract — De eo quod 

 interest, 185 ; Story on Bailments, 

 161. 



