Denuntiatio

In Old English Law. A public notice or summons.

Bracton 202 o. DE0DANO.

Any personal chattel whatever, animate or inanimate, which is the immediate cause of the death of a human creature. It was forfeited to the king to be distributed in alms by his high almoner "for the appeasing," says Coke, "of God's wrath/' The word comes from Deo dandum, a thing that must be offered to God. A Latin phrase which is attributed to Bracton has, by mistranslation, given rise to some erroneous statements in some of the authors as to what are deodands. Omnia quae ad mortem movent, although it evidently means all things which tend to produce death, has been rendered move to death, — thus giving rise to the theory that things in motion only are to be forfeited. A difference, however, according to Blackstone, existed as to how much was to be sacrificed. Thus, if a man should fall from a cartwheel, the cart being stationary, and be killed, the wheel only would be deodand: while, if he was run over by the same wheel in motion, not only the wheel but the cart and the load became deodand. And this, even though it belonged to the dead man. Horses, oxen, carts, boats, mill-wheels, and cauldrons were the commonest deodands. The common name for it was the "bana," the slayer. In the thirteenth century the common practice was that the thing itself was delivered to the men of the township where the death occurred, and they had to account to the king's officers. In very early records the justices in eyre named the charitable purpose, to which the money was to be applied; 2 Poll. & Maitl. 471. In 1840, a railway company in England was amerced £2,000, as a deodand. r^eodands were not abolished till 1S46.

See 1 Bla. Com. 301; 2 Steph. Com. 551; Holmes, C. L. 24.

No deodand accrues in the case of a felonious killing; 1 Q. B. 818; 1 G. & D. 211, 481; Dow. 1048. Deodands, as droits formerly attaching to the office of the Lord High Admiral, are defined as "things instrumental to the death of a man on shipboard, or goods found on a dead body cast on shore."

See 2 Browne, Civ. L. 56.'