Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/80

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

acts than are legal obligations; for, as an equitable obligation always has some legal or equitable right for its subject, any tortious injury to, or destruction of, this latter right, or any wrongful transfer of it, will, it seems, be a tort to the equitable obligee. Thus, a trespass committed upon land or upon a chattel which is the subject of an equitable obligation, is, it seems, a tort to the equitable obligee, though, as it is also a tort to the legal owner, and as the equitable obligee can, as a rule, obtain redress only through the legal owner, the tort to the equitable obligee seldom attracts attention. So it seems that any wrongful extinguishment by the obligee of an obligation which is itself the subject of an equitable obligation, though it is a breach of the equitable obligation, is also a tort to the equitable obligee. So it seems that the alienation by its owner of any right which is the subject of an equitable obligation, in disregard of such obligation, is a tort to the equitable obligee.

This completes what it was proposed to say upon the subject of rights and their violation, and the way is thus prepared to treat of remedies.

C. C. Langdell.

[To be continued.]