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Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Acknowledgment - Under a Statute Regulating Acknowledgments by Married Women - An Examination Made Over Telephone is not Sufficient - In a question involving the validity of a mortgage deed, it appeared that the acknowledgment of a Mrs. Bertholf had been taken by means of telephone. The court, in construing the Idaho statute regulating acknowledgments of married women, held that the clear intent of the statute was that all acknowledgments should be taken in person before the magistrati, and any attempted acknowledgment not taken in person, though correct in form and without suspicion of fraud, was void, being beyond the …

Gratuitous Partial Assignments, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

Is it possible to make an effective and irrevocable assignment by way of gift of part of a chose in action? There are no obvious reasons why it should not be possible. Gifts of a great variety of valuable rights are favored and protected by the law. Why not a gift of part of a chose in action? An answer deduced from the decided cases is not in all respects as certain and satisfactory as one might anticipate. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the answer is problematical. The problem invites interest, not only because it appears …

Declaratory Judgments, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

The Declaratory Judgments Act of Michigan (Act No. 150, P. A. 1919) provided as follows: (Sec. 1) "No action or proceeding in any court of record shall be open to objection on the ground that a merely declaratory judgment, decree or order is sought thereby, and the court may make binding declarations of rights whether any consequential relief is or could be claimed, or not, including the determination, at the instance of anyone claiming to be interested under a deed, will or other written instrument, of any question of construction arising under the instrument and a declaration of the rights …

Public Policy And Personal Opinion, John B. Waite

Articles

THE real relation of economics to law, only recently acquiring positive recognition, is illuminated by the varying decisions in regard to attempted restrictions on the enjoyment of personal property.

Due Process Of Law In Procedure, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

There are two classes of cases which may arise under the "due process" provisions of the 5th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution, so far as rules of procedure are concerned. One embraces cases of new remedial processes which may be criticized as too radical. The other consists of cases of old processes which may be criticized as obsolete and out of harmony with prevailing conceptions of justice. Due process may thus be said to fill the wide space between those innovations which carry us so far away from established methods as to remove the safeguards which are …

The Suspension Of The Absolute Power Of Alienation, Oliver S. Rundell

Michigan Law Review

In his Nature and Sources of Law, John Chipman Gray says, "The Common Law has often been reproached with the lack of precision and certainty in its definitions, but, in truth, it is a great advantage of the Common Law, and of the mode of its development by judicial decision, that its definitions are never the matters resolved by the cases; they are never anything but dicta. If at the end of the sixteenth, or of the seventeenth, or even of the eighteenth century, there had been definitions binding by statute on the Courts; if the meaning of 'contract', and …

Constitutional Law In 1919-1920, Iii, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

Five of the corporations which fought in vain against exercises of the police power profited nothing from their grasp at the obligation-of-contracts clause. In Milwaukee Electric Ry. & Light Co. v. Wisconsin2 the contract relied on was a clause in the charter of a street railroad imposing on it the duty to keep the space between and near its tracks in good repair "with the same material as the city shall have last used to pave or repave these spaces and the street previous to such repairs, unless the railway company and the board of public works of said city …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Automobiles - Constitutionality of Statute Making Owner Liable for Injury Caused by Another's Negligent Driving The automobile of D, driven negligently by his fifteen-year-old son. injured P. In an action for damages, D offered evidence that his son took and was driving the automobile against his express orders. Held, such evidence is not admissible in view of PUBLIc AcTs or 1915, No. 302, Sec. 29, providing that if the motor vehicle is being driven at the time of the injury by an immediate member of the owner's family it shall be conclusively presumed that it was with the owner's consent …

Note And Comment, Horace Lafayette Wilgus, Victor H. Lane, William C. O'Keefe, Evans Holbrook

Michigan Law Review

Baseball and the Judiciary - The acceptance by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis of the position of supreme arbiter of professional baseball, as recently announced, raises questions of good taste if not of propriety. It has been generally assumed that Judges of the District Court of the United States have their hands amply full if they do the work incumbent upon them in a way befitting a judge of the United States. It may well be true that the salary provided by the Government is grossly inadequate, but we dare say that no one has considered that the remedy for such …

Constitutional Law In 1919-1920 Ii, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

Two important cases sustained objections to applications of the federal income tax. In each there was vigorous dissent. Evans v. Gore2 held that the constitutional provision that the federal judges shall receive "a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office" applies to diminution by inclusion of that compensation in the assessment of the general federal tax on net income. The case at bar involved a tax on the i918 compensation of a judge appointed in 1899. While not directly qualified by anything in the opinion, the decision would seem to have no application to judges appointed …

Indirect Revocation And Termination By Death Of Offers, James Lewis Parks

Michigan Law Review

In a learned and useful article, entitled "The Duration and Termination of an Offer,"1 by Professor Oliphant, which appeared in the January, 192o number of MICHIGAN LAW RvmIW, the nature of an offer to make a simple contract was considered as well as the question of when such an offer can be regarded as either revoked, or terminated. It is pointed out that where the actual state of mind of the offerer is different from his apparent state of mind that "the former must be ignored, and whenever -they happen to be identical that it may be ignored without effecting …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Animals - Knowledge of Vicious Propensity - Owner not Liable for Dog Upsetting Ford - The defendant's dog had been in the habit of following and barking at automobiles, and this fact was known to the defendant. The plaintiff was riding with her husband in a Ford car, when suddenly the defendant's dog jumped in front of them. By running over the dog, the car was thrown against an embankment and the plaintiff was injured. Held, that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover, there being no evidence of a vicious propensity in the dog. Melicker v. Sedlacek (Iowa, i92o), …

Interest On Claims In Receivership Proceedings, Ralph E. Clark

Michigan Law Review

Outside the cases of receivership, the Supreme Court of the United States has said: "We reach the conclusion that whatever may have been the English and early American rule, the tendency in Virginia as elsewhere in this country, is to allow interest on contracts to pay money from the date that the debt becomes due."'

Note And Comment, Alan W. Boyd, Edson R. Sunderland, Edwin C. Goddard, Edgar N. Durfee, Ralph W. Aigler

Michigan Law Review

James H. Brewster - Thousands of alumni and former students of the Law School will learn with deep regret of the sudden death of Professor Brewster in Denver, Colorado, on October 7, 1920.

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Adoption - Right to Inherit from Foster Parents Not Lost by Readoption by Natural Father - In an adopted child's action against the natural children of foster parents and their assigns for the partition of real estate, where it appeared that the child had been re-adopted by the natural father, and where it appeared that she had stood by while the natural children sold the property to the co-defendants, it was held that the right to inherit from the foster parents was not lost by the readoption by the natural father and that she was nct estopped to assert her …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Bills and Notes - "Fictitious Payee" - Payee a Person Not Intended to Have Any Interest - A member of a firm, authorized to sign the firm's name, made checks payable to an existing association, which he did not intend should ever gain possession of or have any interest in such checks, merely for the purpose of obtaining money for himself, which he did by unlawfully indorsing the association's name to the checks. The plaintiff firm now seek to recover the amount of the checks, charged to their account by the defendant bank, and the defense is that the payee …

Joinder Of Actions, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

There is a further striking failure which must be charged to the legal profession in America, which grows out of the one just noted, and that is its ignorance of and indifference to improvements in procedural practice developed in other jurisdictions. It is safe to say that if a new method of treating cancer were discovered and successfully employed in England; every intelligent doctor in the world would almost immediately know about it and attempt to take advantage of it. But it is equally safe to say that if a new and successful method of treating some procedural problem were …

Freedom Of Speech And Of The Press In The Federalist Period The Sedition Act, Thomas F. Carroll

Michigan Law Review

The constitutional problem to which the Espionage Act of 1917 gave rise is almost as old as the Government itself. As early as 1798 the constitutional authority of the Government over speech ,and the press was called into question. The controversy caused by the Sedition Act of that date forms the subject of this paper.

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Adverse Possession - Color of Title - Deed Color of Title Although Known not to Convey Title - In a suit for trespass the land which the plaintiff claimed to own was in part occupied by plaintiff's church building and the adjoining lot was used by the members of the church for hitching iheir horses and for picnics, etc. Both tracts had been so used by the plaintiff for twenty-five years or more. The land was conveyed by A to plaintiff, by deed recorded, describing the land purported to be conveyed. The defendant claimed that the deed did not operate …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Accretion - Title to New Land - Encroachment of Watercourse Upon Lands Beyond - D's lands were bounded on the east by a river and on the west by the land of P. By erosion the river slowly shifted until all of D's tract was washed away as well as part of P's holding. The river then slowly receded and the land of P was built up as was also new land east of the former boundary of P and D. P brings an action to quiet title for the land newly formed. Held, title to the land in dispute …

Is The Assignee Of A Contract Liable For The Non-Performance Of Delegated Duties?, Grover C. Grismore

Articles

IT is an oft recurring statement that "rights arising out of a contract cannot be transferred if they are coupled with liabilities." It is such obscure statements as this which give rise to and perpetuate error, and an examination of the cases will show that this one has been responsible for no little confusion in regard to the matter of assignment in the law of Contract. Our courts, under the pressure of a well filled docket, are prone to seize upon a broad generalization of this kind without examining its true meaning or defining its proper limitations. It is high …

Writs Vs Rights An Unended Contest, Lyman P. Wilson

Michigan Law Review

It is desired in the following pages, even at the expense of repeajing much that is already common knowledge, to emphasize that as yet we are not done with the formulary system of the common law, despite the fact that codes of civil procedure in most of our states have purported to end the varied and interesting career of forms of action at common law by legislating them out of existence. However, that legislative edict has been about as effecttive as was the famous, but probably mythical, order of King Canute to the waves of the sea. Certain well-known illustrations …

Fictitious Payee, Victor H. Kulp

Michigan Law Review

It is proposed to discuss the doctrine that negotiable instruments with fictitious payees are deemed payable to bearer, and to note the conditions and limitations of the rule.

Book Reviews, Joseph H. Drake

Michigan Law Review

The appearance in permanent form of these five lectures, which were first published in the Fortnightly Review in 1878 and i879, will be welcomed by all interested in the history of jurisprudence, since they put forth in most attractive form several of the basic principles of the subject as they were understood by learned English jurists forty years ago. They are reissued in practically unchanged form, with annotations by Professor Lefroy, whose untimely death apparently occurred before the volume was printed, though there is no notice of that sad event in the book itself.

Practice Court Rules, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

The purpose of the Practice Court is to afford to students of this department practical instruction in pleading both at law and in equity, under the common law system and the "reformed" or "code" procedure, and actual experience in the commencement and trial of cases through all their stages.

This booklet outlines the Practice Court Rules for 1920.

Copyright And Morals, Edward S. Rogers

Michigan Law Review

The basis for national copyright legislation in this country is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have power * * * to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Note And Comment, Joseph H. Drake, Grover C. Grismore, Victor H. Lane, Edgar N. Durfee, Robert G. Day

Michigan Law Review

Epithetical Jurisprudence and the Annexation of Fixtures - If we begin with all the facts of a controversy and proceed inductively to determine the rights of the parties litigant, we thus arrive at a jurisprudence of rights, whereas, if we reason deductively from a rule, a definition, or a maxim of law to its application in the facts of our case, we can at best attain only a jurisprudence of rules, which has been so aptly characterized as an epithetical jurisprudence. The subject of fixtures is one in which we have great difficulty in applying the inductive method because the …

Patent Law, John Barker Waite

Books

The comparatively small size of the book is not due to any conscious superficiality of treatment nor omission of pertinent subject matter. It purports to cover only the substantive law of patents, their nature, validity, effect, and their characteristics as property. Matters of procedure in securing patents or suing on them, and the difficult subject of the amount of compensation recoverable by suit, would require a volume for themselves and are not included here. But of the matter which is included, it has been my desire to present every issue which has come before the courts....

This book is intended …

The Courts As Authorized Legal Advisors Of The People, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

It is doubtful whether American legal institutions have witnessed a more far-reaching procedural reform since New York adopted its Code of Civil Procedure in 1848, than the movement toward the authorization of judicial declarations of rights which has received its chief impetus from legislation enacted in three American States during the past year. A somewhat timid step in this direction was taken by the New Jersey Chancery Practice Act of 1915, but it disclosed a want of confidence in the broad effectiveness of the remedy. Now for the first time American legislation has definitely committed itself to the principle that …

Jurisprudence And The Study Of Cases, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

Following the suggestion of our Chairman, we have apparently agreed to assume that under the theme of jurisprudence we are to include all of the abstract, nonutilitarian subjects bearing upon the subject of law. Whether we call it a historical science, a science of sciences, or a philosophy, we all believe that it Is a valuable body of rapidly increasing knowledge, and our purpose now is to determine the methodological question as to how it can be made available for our undergraduate students in the law school.