Carpenter v. Moore

(concurring in part and dissenting in part)— In this day of substantially enlightened legal reforms, it has been said with considerable critical discernment by the British legal historian, Maitland, that the common-law forms of actions are dead, but that “they rule us from their graves.”

Potentially, Maitland’s thesis has a bearing on three questions presented in this case: (1) whether plaintiffs had to elect to sue and had to maintain their action strictly either as one ex contractu or as one ex delicto; (2) whether plaintiffs’ evidence herein is such that it may be said that a good cause of…