NOTES. 185 ance of the defendant, to adopt a procedure (i) for ascertaining the cases in which there is a real controversy between the parties ; (2) for diminishing the cost of litigation in cases which are fought out to judg- ment. The committee is of opinion the questions in controversy be- tween litigants may be ascertained without pleadings. In the 20,804 cases which, as appeared from the statistics of 1879, were either settled or abandoned without being taken into court, it may reasonably be sup- posed that pleadings were of little use. Of the cases which go to trial it appears to the committee that in a very large number the only ques- tions are — Was the defendant guilty of the tortious act charged, and what ought he to pay for it ? or. Did the defendant enter into the alleged contract, and was it broken by him? And in a great many others the pleadings present classes of claims and defences which follow common forms. We may take, for instance, the disputes arising out of mer- cantile contracts for sale, of affreightment, of insurance, of agency, of guarantee. The cases of litigants are usually put forward in the same shape, the plaintiff relying on the contract and complaining of breaches ; the defendant, on the other hand, denying the contract or the breaches, or contending that his liabihty on the contract has terminated. The ques- tions in dispute are, as a general rule, well known to the plaintiff and the defendant. It is only when their controversies have to be reproduced in technical forms that difficulties begin." The application of the maxim Sic utere iuo ut alienum non Icedas to adjoining land-owners has given the courts much difficulty, and the law on the subject is by no means clear ; but it is safe to say that few cases have gone so far as Reinhardt v. Mentasti (42 Ch. D. 685), decided last year in the Chancery Division in England. The defendant in that case, who kept a hotel in a part of London where, as the court said, hotels were conveniently built, used in his kitchen a stove " of an ordinary character and well constructed." Kekewich, J., while admitting that this use of the defendant's property was perfectly reasonable, granted an injunction because the stove and the hot-air shaft connected with it raised the tem- perature of the plaintiff's wine-cellar, on the other side of the partition wall, and made it unfit for the purpose of storing wine. He relied much on the case of Broder v. Saillard (2 Ch. D. 692), (a case of noise from a stable, which seriously interfered with the plaintiff's sleep ; it may be observed that the stable was built, in the language of Jessel, M. R., "not as stables usually are, but next to the wall of the plain- tiffs dwelling-house"), and treated the reasonableness of the defend- ant's acts as immaterial, regarding the inquiry whether the plaintiff had suffered damage as the sole test. " The real question is, does he [the defendant] injure his neighbor?" So literal an interpretation of the maxim Sic utere tiio seems to call for the remark of Earl, J., in Camp- bell w. Seaman {(i2> N. Y. 568, 576), "It does not mean that one must never use his own so as to do any injury to his neighbor or his prop- erty; such a rule could not be enforced in civilized society." As the law is laid down in Reinhardt v. Mentasti^ the question of reasonable- ness seems to be somewhat one-sided ; from the defendant's point of view the court's solicitude for the plaintiffs wine-cellar at the expense of his cooking-stove cannot seem altogether reasonable. It is true that Hole v. Barlow (4 C. B. n. s. 334), which laid it
