VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
415 
while the law is that when a person expresses simply an opinion 
about a piece of property, that is not a warranty, yet if he ex¬ 
presses an opinion with reference to that property, or expresses a 
fact in the form of an opinion, when he knows the contrary to be 
the fact, then he cannot shield himself under the mere form of 
the expression of an opinion. In this case I did not consider, and 
do not consider, any material difference, or any point upon which 
the jury need to be troubled in this matter, for the reason that if 
the language, as stated by the plaintiff, was that the horse was 
sound so far as he knew, yet being a horseman himself, and offer¬ 
ing himself as an expert upon the stand, and the injury being of 
such a character as such an expert and horseman must have 
known, therefore if the injury existed at all, or if the unsound¬ 
ness existed at all at the time of the sale, it appears from the 
testimony that the plaintiff must have known of it: and there¬ 
fore, whether the language was in the unqualified form, as claimed 
by the plaintiff, if there was a spavin upon this horse at the time 
he was sold, the plaintiff himself, being a horseman, and supposed 
to know about these things—why, if he knew of it at the time, 
there would be no difference between the two. Nevertheless it is 
always a question of fact for the jury to determine, whether there 
was a warranty or not, and it is so in this case. When in the 
trading for property a man asserts a fact, and it is relied upon by 
the other side, that amounts to a warranty of the property. When 
he asserts a fact, I mean, with reference to which the purchaser is 
ignorant. If a man undertakes to warrant that which another 
can see with his own eyes, the purchaser is not supposed to be 
deceived in buying under such a warranty. 
For instance, if a man warrants a horse to be entirely sound, 
and one ear is gone,'any one can see that there could be no ac¬ 
tion upon such a warranty as that. But when a man asserts a 
fact of which the buyer is ignorant, and with reference to which 
the seller is supposed to have knowledge, that amounts to a war¬ 
ranty ; but when a man expresses simply an opinion about prop¬ 
erty with reference to which he has simply formed a judgment, 
then that is not a warranty. As, for instance, suppose one was 
to ask the seller of a horse if he was able to do a certain kind of 
