Definition
A historical writ of trespass arising under early English common law, issued against a carrier who handled a pipe of wine so carelessly that the cask was staved in and its contents lost. The writ gave the owner of the wine a remedy in trespass against the negligent bailee — the person entrusted with transporting the goods — for the loss caused by that carelessness. The term is Latin and translates roughly to "concerning a pipe of wine being carried."
The writ is principally significant not as a living legal instrument but as an illustrative example of the early common law's willingness to impose liability on a carrier for negligent handling of goods in transit, predating the more systematic treatment of bailment liability that developed in later centuries.
---
Common Confusion
De pipa vini carianda is sometimes loosely described as a negligence action, but it arose as a writ of trespass, not case. The distinction mattered procedurally in the old forms of action: trespass required a direct, forcible wrong, while trespass on the case reached indirect or consequential harms. Whether careless staving of a cask during transit was properly trespass or case was itself a contested question in early law, and the writ's classification reflects the era's imprecise boundary between the two forms. Researchers should not assume modern negligence doctrine maps cleanly onto this writ.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This writ has almost no independent doctrinal significance in modern research. Its value is entirely historical and illustrative. It appears in the literature almost exclusively in connection with the foundational bailment case Coggs v. Bernard (1703), where Sir William Jones's treatise on bailment invoked it as evidence that early English law already recognized carrier liability for negligent loss. Researchers encountering this term in older texts are almost certainly following a citation trail back to Jones's Bailment or to the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.), the medieval register of writs where the form was preserved.
A key navigational point: the two editions of Black's Law Dictionary differ slightly in their citation. The first edition references "Coggs v. Barnard" while the second correctly identifies the report as 2 Ld. Raym. 900 (Coggs v. Bernard). Researchers should use the second edition's citation when tracing primary sources.
The writ also appears in discussions of the historical development of negligence and bailment law, particularly in scholarship examining how trespass writs were stretched to reach what we would today call negligent conduct. It is an entry point into the broader question of how the common law moved from form-of-action thinking to principle-based tort and contract liability.
Do not expect to find this writ in American legal sources. It is a creature of English medieval and early modern practice with no direct American procedural descendant.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary treat the writ identically in substance, defining it as a trespass remedy for carelessly staving a pipe of wine during carriage. The second edition adds the specific law report citation for Coggs v. Bernard, which is the more useful reference. Neither edition elaborates on the writ's procedural history or explains why it was classified as trespass rather than case — a gap that Jones's treatise itself helps fill.
Sir William Jones's Bailment (1781) is the primary modern (in the historical sense) authority discussing this writ, and its mention there is the reason it entered the common law dictionary tradition at all. Jones used it to demonstrate the antiquity of bailment remedies, not to advocate for its revival. The Registrum Omnium Brevium, the original source, preserves the writ form but is accessible only through specialist collections; researchers relying solely on Black's will have everything practically necessary for historical research purposes.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Bailment; History of the Forms of Action
---