Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1900-01-11
is THE HEN REAL ESTATE?
A Knotty Question Which Set All
Maine to Guessing.

A dispatch to the New York Sun
from East Bucksport, Maine, says:
THE Hill-Oliver feud, which has been
raging with more or less intensity for
among the neighbors and bringing the
Hill and Oliver families into the
Police Court two or three times a
year, has been settled out of court, and
old Oliver, a pensioner of the Civil
War, has retired to his camp in the
woods to work off his superfiuous ener-
gies sharing rabbits and shooting deer.
LAS the story of the trouble occupies
many pages of the County Court
record, and as the trouble itself has
vexed judges and lawyers and fur
nished subject for debate since 1894,
nearly everybody in eastern Maine
had become a partisan of one side or
the other and had expressed an opinion
upon the matter that would effectually
disqualify him from jury service
whenever the case came up for trial.
THE family quarrel began II or Is
years ago, when Hill, young farmer
Of the town, married divers daughter
Nancy. The first quarrel was over a
matter of family discipline. One day
when Hills son and divers grandson
Master Henry Oliver Hill, has been
soundly whipped by his father, old
man Oliver interfered and was choked
for his trouble. The judge had no
sooner acquitted Hill on the charge Of
assault and battery than Oliver turned
his dog loose among Hills hens. The
dog had killed three hens and filled
the barnyard with feathers from other
hens that were not dead, when Hill ap-
peared on the scene, killed the dog and
knocked his father-in-law over a saw
horse.
LAS soon as Oliver was able to get to
a lawyers office he had his son-in-
law arrested for assault and battery
and brought civil suit against him
for destroying property belonging to
oliver, namely, one pointer dog, hav-
ing an appraised value of SIS. Hill
paid his fine in the assault and battery
case and appealed from the $3.50 costs
dWdl utu " O1lNc1 lOl Lut lOoo VI lllS
dog. Then he brought suit against
mis- father-in-law for killing his hens.
After long trial by jury a verdict
against Hill was returned for So with
S62 additional in costs for killing
divers dog, and Oliver was asked to
pay $3.50 with $3.50 in costs for STAY
ing Hills hens.
There is a century-old dispute
among the lawyers of Maine as to just
what constitutes personal property.
Until a law was passed, in 1893, put
ting per capita tax on dogs no man
could assess damages for the loss Of
his dog, decision rendered in 1857 de-
claring that all dogs were in the nature
of wild animals, in which no person
could legally claim ownership. The
act of 1893 having made personal prop
erty of dogs, it was inferred that all
animals which man had about his
place-with the possible exception o.
rats and mice-were personal property.
Basing their suit on the act of 1893,
shall be responsible for all damages
which they commit upon Sneep ana
other domestic animals, Hill and his
lawyers believed they had clean case
against Oliver, but when exceptions
were filed asking for a new trial it
was fuond that Oliver and his lawyers
claimed that hens were not domestic
animals; therefore, they were not
property. Hence any person, or the
agent or the dog Of any person, could
kill hens without coming under the ban
of the laws. In support Of their side
of the case divers lawyers cited two
decisions from the Maine reports which
declared that doves were wild animals.
for the Staying of which no damages
could be assessed, and for whose depre-
dations no owner could be held respon-
|sible 1t therefore seemed to follow
that il dove was Wild animal, hen