2 Cai. Cas. 219 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1804
Trom the summary of the testimony we are constrained to say, there ought to have been a verdict for the defendant. In actions of this nature, the daughter is supposed to be violated with force, against the will and consent of the father. It is then, and then only, that he is entitled to compensation for the loss of her service. But when he consents or connives at the criminal intercourse, he seeks with very ill grace a retribution in damages. Vo-lenti non fit injuria. If lie be not particeps criminis, he is something very like it. His assurance in coming here for redress can be equalled only by the indifference with which he submitted to the sacrifice of his daughter’s chastity. We lay out of view the custom which it is agreed prevails in that part of the country, for young people, who are courting, to sleep together; nor can we conceive why this custom has been pressed into the plaintiff’s service. If it furnishes an excuse for his carelessness, or his daughter’s indiscretion, it is some apology also for the defendant. *At any rate, parents who countenance, or take no pains to abolish, at least within their own walls, a practice so indecorous or dangerous, have no right to complain, or ask satisfaction for consequences ■ which must so naturally follow from it. Nor is it an excuse for the parent to say that promises of marriage had been exchanged. If, under such engagements, he thought there was no harm in permitting what nothing but wedlock itself should have sanctioned, he knew the risk to which his daughter was exposed. These vows might be broken, or the young lady, as there is too much reason to believe was the case here, might, by her own indiscreet behavior, justify the lover in transferring his affections to some other object. On the daughter’s behavior, however, it is not necessary now to dwell, as we are not showing what measure of damages
New trial
Where the action is maintainable, the father may recover damages for the injury, “in losing the comfort of his child, in whose virtue he can feel no consolation, and as the parent of other children whose morals may be corrupted by her example.” Bedford v. M'Kewl, 3 Esp. Rep. 119. So if the