except in a practical way, but the question would be raised whether, notwithstanding the right of the board to remove, proof that they were actuated by malevolence would not make a removal actionable.  Policy, it might be said, forbids going behind their judgment, but actual evil motives coupled with the absence of grounds withdraw this protection, because policy, although it does not require them to take the risk of being right, does require that they should judge honestly on the merits. 1

Other isolated instances like the last might, perhaps, be found in different parts of the law, in which actual malevolence would affect a man’s liability for his conduct.  Again, in trover for the conversion of another’s chattel, where the dominion exercised over it was of a slight and ambiguous [144] nature, it has been said that the taking must be “with the intent of exercising an ownership over the chattel inconsistent with the real owner’s right of possession.” 1 But this seems to be no more than a faint shadow of the doctrine explained with regard to larceny, and does not require any further or special discussion.  Trover is commonly understood to go, like larceny, on the plaintiff’s being deprived of his property, although in practice every possessor has the action, and, generally speaking, the shortest wrongful withholding of possession is a conversion.

Be the exceptions more or less numerous, the general purpose of the law of torts is to secure a man indemnity against certain forms of harm to person, reputation, or estate, at the hands of his neighbors, not because they are wrong, but because they are harms.  The true explanation of the reference of liability to a moral standard, in the sense which has been explained, is not that it is for the purpose of improving men’s hearts, but that it is to give a man a fair chance to avoid doing the harm before he is held responsible for it.  It is intended to reconcile the policy of letting accidents lie where they fall, and the reasonable freedom of others with the protection of the individual from injury.

But the law does not even seek to indemnify a man from all harms.  An unrestricted enjoyment of all his possibilities would interfere with other equally important enjoyments on the part of his neighbors.  There are certain things which the law allows a man to do, notwithstanding the fact that he foresees that harm to another will follow from them.  He may charge a man with crime if the charge is true.  He may establish himself in business where he foresees that [145] of his competition will be to diminish the custom of another shopkeeper, perhaps to ruin him.  He may a building which cuts another off from a beautiful prospect, or he may drain subterranean waters and thereby drain another’s well; and many other cases might be put.