The Right op Property in “Round” Seals: — A judgment of considerable importance in regard to the right of property in seals which have been killed but not taken possession of has been given in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland. Mr. Power, the commander the steamer Narwhal, belonging to the Dundee Sealing and Whaling Company, and Mr. Kennedy, the commander of the steamer Vanguard, raised cross actions against each other to recover the value of some thousands of seals said to have been wrongfully taken at the last spring’s seal fishery. The cases were tried before the Chief Justice. In both of them the jury decided in favour of Kennedy, and the second action he was found entitled to £360. This mainly turned upon the appropriation, as was alleged, of “round” seals. The cases were taken on appeal before the Supreme Court on the question of law, and there Mr. Justice Pinsent was of opinion that there should be new trials unless Kennedy consented to reduce the verdict to at least the sum of £24. Parties have consented to settle out of Court on the basis of the terms of this Judge’s opinion, and it has been published in the Royal Gazette, not as the authoritative judgment of the full Court, but only as that of the Judge himself. In this opinion it is said: — “l am of opinion that no right of property is acquired by the mere indiscriminate slaughter of seals; that it would monstrous for the law to support a claim of right to scattered round seals on the part of ships the crews which distribute themselves over area of some miles, and for the purpose of preventing competition and anticipating the arrival and active participation of others in the fruits of the icefields kill as they go with the blow of gaff, taking no heed to collect and pan and mark their spoil, reserving all care in these respects until, as they believe or profess and, in this case, assert, they have left no accessible seals alive. The evil becomes aggravated when more crews than one contributes to the confusion that mnst necessarily arise from so reprehensible a practice, which is open to the further most serious objections that seals deteriorate from being left to harden and freeze upon the ice before “sculping,” and that large numbers are forever lost to the common stock. I admit the general proposition that property may be acquired and retained in “round seals”, as well as “sculped seals,” and by similar means; but I hold that the killing must be accomplished by possession, and that when the next comer finds the body of a seal or bodies of seals on the ice without any accompanying indicia of property, the man who claims as of right against him must be in position then and there to assert his right property, to point to the specific seals as his own or those of his fellows, and to exercise corporal control over them, unless he is resisted by force or deterred by threats of violence. Except under such circumstances, I am of opinion that the killer must be held to have left or abandoned the dead round seals to the neat finder who shall possess himself of them.
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Referenced
GRO0747 Hennock: Robert John Pinsent: 1834 – 1893