ts and
teachers may be held for injuries by minors under their charge,
masters for injuries by their apprentices, employers for injuries by
employees and those in charge of animals for injuries by such animals.
Also it provided an absolute liability for injury by a _res ruinosa_,
developed out of the Roman _cautio damni infecti_. In the case of
parents, teachers and masters of apprentices, there is only a
presumption of fault. They may escape by showing affirmatively that
they were without fault and that what happened could not have been
prevented by diligence on their part. In the case of employers no
excuse is admitted. The liability is absolute. In the case of
animals, fault of the victim, inevitable accident and _vis maior_ may
be shown affirmatively by way of defence. In the case of a _res
ruinosa_ there is no presumption of fault. But if the structure fell
or did injury because of a defect of construction or want of repair,
the owner is liable absolutely and may not show that he had no notice
of the defect and no reason to suspect it, or that it was not in his
power to prevent the structure from falling.

Thus it will be seen that French law came very near to a logically
consistent scheme of liability for fault, and civil liability for
fault only, throughout the whole delictal field. Employer's liability
remained absolute, and liability for animals but little short of
absolute. For the rest there was in certain cases an imposition of the
burden of proof that there had been no fault, leaving the ultimate
liability to rest upon a presumed fault, if want of fault was not
established. None the less this, the most thoroughgoing attempt to
make delictal liability flow exclusively from culpability--to make it
a corollary of fault and of fault only--fell short of complete
attainment of its aim. Recent French authors do not hesitate to say
that the attempt must be given over and that a new theory of civil
delictal liability must be worked out. Meanwhile the same movement
away from the simple theory of delictal liability for culpable
causation of damage had taken place elsewhere on the Continent.
Binding had subjected the _culpa-prinzip_ to thorough analysis, and
following him it had come to be rejected generally by recent German
and Swiss jurists.

In the common law, as has been said, we begin likewise with a set of
nominate torts--assault, battery, imprisonment, trespass on lands,
trespass on chattels, conversion, dece