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Excerpt from The Revised Reports, Vol. 76: Being a Republication of Such Cases in the English Courts of Common Law and Equity, From the Year 1785, as Are Still of Practical Utility; 1846-1848
Humble v. Hunter, p. 291, decides the neat point that a party who contracts expressly as owner, or by some other description importing that he is the real principal, cannot be admitted to prove that he was an agent so as to enable his undisclosed principal to sue on the contract. There has been judicial criticism of Clagards v. Detlzz'clc (p. 305) by the late Lord Bramwell; the idiosyncrasies of his views about negligence are well known to students of the decisions reported in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He deliberately held that if a man takes the smallest fresh risk in order to escape from a dangerous or costly situation into which another's negligence has brought him, such action is in the nature of contributory negligence and deprives the party of all right to compensation for resulting damage. That, however, is not the prevailing opinion. Humpbrz'es v. Brogden, p. 402, is a leading decision on the right to support for one's land, in this case as between the surface-owner and a subjacent mine-owner. Some branches of the subject are still not so clear as might be wished. Walt v. Baker, p. 469, contains an instructive judgment of Baron Parke's on the appropriation of specific goods to an originally non-specific contract of sale. Baron v. Denman, p. 554, is one of the small but important class of authorities on acts of State. It used to be said that the numerous pleas mentioned in the report, or some of them, were drawn by the late Sir James Shaw vvilles, then at the Bar (whose name, however, does not appear), and included such allega tions as that in the locus in guo, to wit, the Gallinas on the west coast of Africa, there was an ancient and laudable custom to burn slave-dealers' barracoons; and, alternatively, that there was no law at all. We do not doubt that the record is extant, but we doubt the wisdom or piety of attempting to verify legends of this kind.
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