LANDOWNER v. INTRUDER; INTRUDER v. LANDOWNER. BASIS OF RESPONSIBILITY IN TORT.

Authors

Leon Green, University of Texas

Abstract

The struggle of the concept of moral blameworthiness to supplant the primitive notion that a person acts at his peril as a basis of responsibility in the field of tort touches every nook and cranny of the common law. The necessity of making use of the same procedure by which the older concept was developed has proved a great hindrance in the way of a quick and complete conquest by the notion of responsibility based upon fault. Negligence cannot yet claim a complete mastery over trespass in the field of unintended violent harms. Nevertheless, in so far as a change of fundamental law can be complete at any particular time it is perhaps now safe to say that a person's responsibility for unintended consequences of his conduct is determined by the law of negligence. The few classes of such cases which continue to cling to the basis of absolute responsibility are but the straggling wayfarers necessarily attendant upon such a far reaching transition.

Recommended Citation

Leon Green, LANDOWNER v. INTRUDER; INTRUDER v. LANDOWNER. BASIS OF RESPONSIBILITY IN TORT., 21 Mich. L. Rev. 495 (1923).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol21/iss5/2