in your power, an action lies against you; if
he becomes the property of some other person, that other is the proper
person to be sued; and if he is manumitted, he becomes directly and
personally liable, and the noxal action is extinguished. Conversely, a
direct action may change into noxal; thus, in an independent person has
done a wrong, and then becomes your slave (as he may in several ways
described in the first Book), a noxal action lies against you in lieu of
the direct action which previously lay against the wrongdoer in person.

6 But no action lies for an offence committed by a slave against his
master, for between a master and a slave in his power there can be no
obligation; consequently, if the slave becomes the property of some
other person, or is manumitted, neither he nor his new master can be
sued; and on the same principle, if another man's slave commits a wrong
against you, and then becomes your property, the action is extinguished,
because it has come into a condition in which an action cannot exist;
the result being that even if the slave passes again out of your power
you cannot sue. Similarly, if a master commits a wrong against his
slave, the latter cannot sue him after manumission or alienation.

7 These rules were applied by the ancients to wrongs committed by
children in power no less than by slaves; but the feeling of modern
times has rightly rebelled against such inhumanity, and noxal surrender
of children under power has quite gone out of use. Who could endure in
this way to give up a son, still more a daughter, to another, whereby
the father would be exposed to greater anguish in the person of a son
than even the latter himself, while mere decency forbids such treatment
in the case of a daughter? Accordingly, such noxal actions are permitted
only where the wrongdoer is a slave, and indeed we find it often laid
down by old legal writers that sons in power may be sued personally for
their own delicts.

TITLE IX. OF PAUPERIES, OR DAMAGE DONE BY QUADRUPEDS

A noxal action was granted by the statute of the Twelve Tables in cases
of mischief done through wantonness, passion, or ferocity, by irrational
animals; it being by an enactment of that statute provided, that if the
owner of such an animal is ready to surrender it as compensation for the
damage, he shall thereby be released from all liability. Examples of
the application of this enactment may be found in kicking by a horse,
or gorin