VICARIOUS LIABILITY AND THE FAMILY AUTOMOBILE

The advent of the automobile into the family life of the present age brought with it a doctrine which has been the troublesome source of much comment in the adjudicated cases and legal literature generally. Were it not for the fact that the battle still wages with much intensity, with very little outward evidence of abatement, it would be presumptuous to add to the already voluminous supply of legal material concerning the law of the family automobile, commonly termed the "family purpose" or "family car" doctrine. If further justification were needed, the problems arising from air navigation, which threatens to become a common mode of travel and pleasure within the next decade, and which will present much the same type of situation as has the family car, should suffice. It may be that the courts generally will discover that the aeroplane, for example, is an inherently dangerous instrumentality and thus avoid many of the difficulties that the somewhat less dangerous automobile has met.