Note 339 — Chapter XVII · LIABILITY.

If the law dates the commission of a wrong from the completion of it, it follows that there are cases in which a man may commit a wrong after his death. If A. excavates his own land so as to cause, after an interval, the subsidence of the adjoining land of B., there is no wrong done until the subsidence happens; Backhouse v. Bonomi, 9 H. L. C. 503; Darley Main Colliery Co. v. Mitchell, 11 A. C. 127. What shall be said, then, if A. is dead in the meantime? The wrong, it seems, is not done by his successors in title: Hall v. Duke of Norfolk, (1900) 2 Ch. 493; Greenwell v. Low Beechburn Colliery, (1897) 2 Q. B. 165. The law, therefore, must hold either that there is no wrong at all, or that it is committed by a man who is dead at the date of its commission.