Opinion ID: 597809
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Origins

Text: 15 Before discussing the forfeiture of the real property and bank accounts in this case, we examine briefly the origins of the concept of forfeiting property to the sovereign. Liability of a thing, an inanimate object or an animal that did a wrongful act, springs from ancient law. When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox must be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten. The owner of the ox, however, shall go unpunished. Exodus 21:28. 16 Roman law followed this principle, except that where an animal caused damage its owner was subject to compensate the injured person or noxally to surrender the animal to the injured party. Noxa was used in the civil law to designate the offense and punishment for such damages by a slave or an animal. The civil law did not apply this rule to inanimate objects as did the common law, which held that when the object that did the act--a gun, for example--was tainted and must be surrendered. See Barry Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law 224 (1962). Justice Holmes in his classic book on the general theory of law, The Common Law, posits that vengeance on the immediate offender (the inanimate thing) was the object of early Greek and Roman law, not indemnity from the owner. Oliver W. Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 34 (1938). 17 In examining the English common law prior to the Revolution, we find the object that does the injury is called a deodand, which Blackstone defines as the accursed thing. He explains that this notion had its roots in religion, as expiation for sudden death, so that, for instance, if a cart runs over a person, the cart is forfeited as a deodand. If one man kills another with a sword, the sword is forfeited as an accursed thing. As a result, in Blackstone's time, in all indictments for homicide the instrument that caused death and its value are found by the grand jury so that the king may claim the deodand. Added to this religious origin as a reason for forfeiture to the sovereign of the deodand is the view that the misfortune brought about by the object was due in part to the negligence of the owner and that a forfeiture of his property properly punishes him. 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries -91 The true reason for permitting forfeiture, according to Blackstone, was that it is part of the price a citizen must pay for breaking the social contract by violating the law. Id. at . 18 As a consequence, it appears to have been the law from the very earliest times that an inanimate object that is the instrumentality by which the law is violated is forfeited as an act of vengeance against the object. Its owner suffers the loss of the property on a negligence theory or as part of the price an owner must pay for permitting personal or real property to be an occasion for violating the law. Such is now the rule in American jurisprudence. See Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 682-83, 94 S.Ct. 2080, 2091-92, 40 L.Ed.2d 452 (1974).