'Way back in the 1800s, not all American jurists were thrilled about pushing the limit under torts for compensation to a plaintiff's hurt feelings.

Might we get the impression that the judge writing an opinion in this case below was one of them?

Fay v. Parker, 53 N.H. 342, 343 . Dec. 1872.

He uses the English Common Law for comparison and contrast for what he sees coming down the tube for his fellow Americans in the legal profession, a little over seven years since the Civil War ended at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.

As he puts it, what happens when a man knocks off another man's hat?

A) Accidently?
B) On purpose?

He then states the 2 cases thusly, on page 383:

"...in the former case the plaintiff's feelings (call them pride, vanity, sensibilities, delicacy, or what you please) are damaged very little if at all, whereas, in the latter case, a jury might properly give £5 for the injury to the plaintiff's person and property -- that is, his face or his nose, and his hat -- and perhaps £495, more or less, according to the aggravation of the circumstances, for the injury to his feelings.

"Is it not quite natural that many people should regard the £495 as punitive instead of compensatory? And how natural it would be for that mistake to grow into law, so far as the law consists of authority and precedent!

"An injury to the feelngs a thousand times greater than the mere pecuniary damages which accompanied or caused the injury to the feelings is a matter too refined, it may be feared, for popular comprehension (except, perhaps, in cases touching the honor of a woman); and therefore juries, and quite frequently judges, would understand they were giving punitive when they were really giving no more than compensatory damages.

"I venture to affirm that the most patient research will be exhausted in vain in the effort to find the English case in which a judge ever deliberately and intentionally told a British jury, in any form of language, that they might give the plaintiff four kinds of damage, arithmetically arranged as follows:

1. £1 = Damage to the plaintiff''s hat,
2. 5s = Damage to his head and face, .
3. £100 = Damage to his feelings,
4. £300 = Punishment of the defendant by way of example, as a protection of the public by enforcement of criminal law in a civil case,

£401 5s. = Total amount of verdict.

"The truth is, this method of compensation is a modern and American invention, resulting from a misunderstanding of the loose and inaccurate forms of expression used in the old English cases."

History seems to show that his was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but undergraduate students of Criminal Justice or Constitutional Law may find it interesting reading, all the same.

End this fragment of American Legal History--End this fragment of American