Trespass, qu. cl., for breaking and entering the plaintiffs’ close, and cutting and carrying away an oak tree, throwing down the plaintiffs’ fence and wall, and incumbering tbe plaintiffs’ land with brush. Facts found by tbe court. Tbe defendant bought the standing timber on a lot adjoining tbe plaintiffs’ land, and made a contract with one Hazen to cut tbe standing trees into lumber at an agreed price per thousand feet.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1891-12-05
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 1974
1 federal appellate · 4 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
¶1
Hazen was a contractor, exercising an independent employment, and selecting his own servants and workmen. He was not an ordinary laborer, personally engaged in tbe cutting of the trees, nor acting under control of tbe defendant. Tbe injuries of which tbe plaintiffs complain were not tbe natural result of tbe work contracted to be done. Tbe contract was to do an act in itself lawful, and tbe authority conferred by tbe defendant on Hazen was that of executing it in a lawful manner. Tbe maxim,
respondeat
superior, does not apply.
Carter
v.
Berlin Mills Co.,
58 N. H. 52.
