Court Opinion

ID: 9811075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:07:33.846593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:25.816160
License: Public Domain

Ruffin, C. J.
dissent. Myopia, or shortness of sight, is, undoubtedly, an imperfection, or defect; and it may be so to such an extent, as to impair the capacity for the usual handicrafts, and therefore diminish the value of a slave. If this, then, had been an action for a deceit, in knowingly concealing this defect, and the scienter had been established, the plaintiff ought to recover; and in that ease, the price given would be material evidence, as raising a presumption, that the defect was or was not dis closed, and also as arising in the estimate of the damages. But the action is not of that kind, but is assumpsit upon a parol special contract of warranty, that the slave was “ sound and healthy and the single question is, whether the slave was rendered unhealthy or unsound by the blemish or defect mentioned, so as to amount to a breach of that contract. It is not supposed by any one, that it is so in respect of the term “ healthy.” But it is held to be so within the other term, “sound.” To me, however, it appears otherwise, and, in the absence of any opinions of medical men, I must so hold. There is no model of a perfect eye, and there are so many degrees in the power of vision, when that organ is in its natural state, as to render it impossible *360to say, that an eye, not having any disease whatever, is '’•unsound,” because the person may not be able to see as far, or objects as small, as to look as intently, and for as long a period, as some other persons. It is known, that there are more myopic persons, among the more educated and refined classes, than in others, and many more among the white than the black race, according to their relative numbers. I never knew a white person rendered unfit for the offices of life by this defect of vision : at least, not so far as not tobe within the remedial operation of glasses; and I confess it never occun’ed to me to call such a person unsound, or to consider that defect different from that of a failing of the sight from age. In neither case is the sight as good as it might be ; but the organ is in its natural condition, and the subject of no malady whatever. Indeed, there is a difference in favor of one having shortness of sight, as that diminishes with the person’s age, while the decay of vision in an eye once good is seldom, if ever, arrested, and gradually increases by the efflux of time merely. It must be remembered, that it is not the degree of imperfection in the vision, which can constitute it “unsoundness for if shortness of sight is unsoundness at all, any shortness of sight, less than that of the majority of mankind, must amount to it, and the degree of it only measures the extent of the unsoundness and the damages. It is the extravagance of that proposition, and the difficulty of applying it with any reasonable certainty and uniformity to persons, and contracts, which makes me withhold my assent from it. On the contrary, the safe rule seems tome to be, that an animal is to be taken as sound of body, each of whose organs is exempt both from decay or present disease.
Per Curiam. Judgment affirmed.