Deodand

[L. Lat, JDeodandum; a thing to be given to Ood.] In English law. Any personal chattel which was the immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature, and which was forfeited to the crown to be applied to pious uses, and distributed in alms by the high almoner.

1 Hal P. C. 419.

Fleta, lib.

1, c. 26.

Bract, fol.

122. 1 BL Com, 300. 2 Steph. Com, 865. 3 Ad, dt EU, N. S. 333. 8 Id, 587.

Deodands included both animate and inanimate objects; thus, if a horse or other animal killed a person, or a cart ran over him, the horse or cart was forfeited as a deodand. So the instrument with which a person was killed, as a sword or knife, was forfeited in the same manner.

1 Bl, Com, 301, 302.

Deodands are unknown in American law, and have very recently been abolished in England by statute 9 & 10 Vict. c.

62.

Oliphant on Horses, Appendix. From the phraseology of the rule in the old books, expressed by the verse. Omnia que movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda, ^all things which move to death are deooiands. Dyer, 11 b.) some have been led to confine the proper meaning of deodand to such things as caused death by their motion^ or by being put in motion. Thus Spelman defines them to be all things, whether brute animals or inanimate objects, by a stroke from which the life of a man is unduly taken away, {quorum impetu vita Iiominis indebite tollitur;) as by the kick of a horse, the goring of an ox, the falling of a beam, the motion of a carriage. But movere ad mortem may also be translated " to tend or lead to death," " to occasion, or contribute to produce death"; a sense which Spelman also alludes to. Accordingly the rule always was that where death was occasioned by a fall from an object at rest, the latter was forfeited as a deodand. Britt, c.

1, 7. 1 Hal. P. C. 422.

Much importance, however, seems to have been from an early period attached to the circumstance of the object being in mx>tion, which led to some distinctions in the later law on this subject.