Odger's English Common Law

404 MALICIOUS INJURIES TO PROPERTY.
ever which the inhabitants exercised certain rights, such as drying their
fishing nets and taking sand or rushes. When the company began to
excavate foundations for an hotel and put up a wooden building as a
temporary office, the inhabitants came in force and threw it down. Not
content with this, they proceeded to demolish it and then dragged the
pieces 120 yards and threw them into the sea. The jury found that the
defendants had acted in the belief that they were asserting a right in the
first place, but that by destroying the office and throwing the pieces over
the cliff into the sea they did more than was necessary to be done in
asserting that right ; and the Court held that they were rightly convicted. 1
l S. v. Clemens and others [1898] 1 Q. B. 556.