192 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. redress must be presumed to have known that he was doing an unlawful act.' If the view thus expressed by the Court of Common Pleas be correct (and I see no reason to dissent from it), the doctrine that one tort-feasor cannot recover from another is inapplicable to a case like that now under consideration." Lord Watson said : — " From these authorities, which are to some extent conflicting, and in other respects are not so definite as one could wish, I think the following conclusions may be derived. They are at variance in so far as they directly relate to the existence or non-existence of a right of relief among those persons who have incurred civil liability by acting together in the perpetra- tion of an offence against the criminal law. But it does not appear to me that the dicta of those writers who negative the existence of such a right can be held to contemplate every case of quasi-delict, whatever be its na- ture. They prima facie refer to proper delicts, and might ex paritate rationis be extended to every quasi-delict which, according to the phrase- ology of Scotch law, sapit naturum delicti., but they cannot, in my opinion, be fairly read as referring to quasi-delicts which involve no moral offence on the part of the delinquent." The rule on this point must inevitably be laid down by the courts, as announced in the Scotch case of Palmer v. Wick & Pulteneytown Steam Shipping Company, and the Pennsylvania case of Armstrong County v. Clarion County, and the other cases supra. Not only do good morals require this rule, but it is vitally necessary to the conduct of business under modern conditions. And, furthermore, the reason for the decision in Merryweather v. Nixan does not exist in the case of a merely negligent tort, not in itself unlawful or intentional. To illustrate the unwisdom of any rule but the one contended for, we may instance the bond given to a sheriff before he makes a levy. If the levy turns out to be wrongful, the sheriff is prop- erly held a wrongdoer as to the person aggrieved, but if to his act and to the bond indemnifying him Merryweather v. Nixan were to be applied, and if under that case his act were to be treated as intentional wrong, then the bond would be quite as ineffective to protect him as the implied assumpsit for indemnity. The courts, however, invariably uphold the right of a sheriff to require such bonds,^ and thus show that Merryweather v. Nixan ^ Bond V. Ward, 7 Mass. 123 (1810); Spangler f. Commonwealth, 16 S. & R. 68 (1827); Chamberlain v. Beller, 18 N. Y. 115 (1858) ; Smith v. Cicotte, 11 Mich. 383 (1863); Commonwealth v. Vandyke, 57 Pa. 34 (1868); Long v. Neville, 36 Cal. 455 (1868); Grace v. Mitchell, 31 Wis. 533 (1872).
