Court case(1828) 4 Bing 628

The defendant rented a walled garden, some distance from his house, in which he grew valuable tulips. Some of his flowers having been stolen, he set a spring gun in the garden, connected to wires, without any notice of it being given. The plaintiff, a youth of nineteen, climbed over the wall in pursuit of a stray peahen that belonged to a neighbour and had flown into the garden. He touched the wire, the gun went off and he was seriously wounded in the knee. He sued the defendant.

The Court of Common Pleas held the defendant liable. Although the plaintiff was a trespasser, the defendant was not entitled to protect his property by a device that would inflict serious injury without warning. Best CJ said that it was inhuman to catch a man by means which may maim him or endanger his life, and that the object of setting a spring gun without notice was not to deter intruders but to injure them. Had notice been given, the case might have been different (compare Ilott v. Wilkes, 1820). The plaintiff's trespass did not deprive him of his remedy.