The Calcutta Weekly Notes Law Notes and Notes of Cases of the Calcutta High Court and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the English Law Courts Monday May 3 1915

The question in this case as in the on we have reported was whether where a prisoner is defended on a charge which may result in the passing of capital sentence and counsel adopts one of several possible altenative lines of defence is the judge bound to direct the jury as to the others especially if they are inconsistent with the lines of defence adoped by counsel? [...] I do not say this merely on my own authority I have the authority of the late Lord Cranworth—one of the ablest of our Judges— for the view I have expressed." In this case the charge referred to acts which if proved would amount to unnatural offence but the Crown prosecuted the accused not for the comission of the offence but for criminal cospiracy with a view to commit the same and the [...] Before the pleadings wore delivered the Defendant died and the question raised was whether the action survived against the executors of the Defedant. [...] The actions which can be brought notwitstanding the maxim are thus defined by Lord Mansfield in Harnbly v. Trott (1 Cowper 371) : —" Where the cause of action is money due or a contract to be performed gain or acquisition of the testator by the work and labour or prperty of another or a promise of the testator express or implied where these are the causes of action the action surv [...] Now as there is no obligation affecting prperty on either side in a contract of marriage I fail to see how the fact that one of the parties suffered pecuniary loss or special damage from the breach of the contract can impose a liability on the executors of the party who broke the contract.