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Articles 20461 - 20490 of 21856

Full-Text Articles in Law

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review Jan 1919

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Bailments - Carriers - Conversion - Trover by Bailee (A Common Carrier) Against a Third Person - On the facts as stated by the court of last resort it is often difficult to discover why any action should ever have been thought of, and impossible to see how the judgment of the trial court should have been in favor of the preposterous claim of the plaintiff. Such seems to be the case of Farmers' Cotton Oil Co. v. Atlanta & St. A. B. Ry. Co. (Ala. I918), 79 So. 387. Plaintiff carrier by mistake delivered cotton seed to defendant company. …

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The Scintilla Rule Of Evidence, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

The Scintilla Rule Of Evidence, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In analyzing the reasons why "trial by jury has declined to such an extent that it has come in many cases to be an avowed maxim of professional action,--a good case is for the court; a bad case is for the jury,"-JUDGE DILLON, in his LAWS AND JURISPRUDENCE, pp. 130-2, credits "the false principle known as the scintilla doctrine" with a large degree of responsibility.

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A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States Justice Holmes makes this interesting observation:- "The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power, although in civilized times it is not necessary to maintain that power throughout proceedings properly begun." Paraphrased, the statement comes to this: In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential.

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Theory Of Popular Sovereignty, Harold J. Laski Jan 1919

Theory Of Popular Sovereignty, Harold J. Laski

Michigan Law Review

Alexis de Tocqueville has wisely insisted upon the natural tendency of men to confound institutions that are necessary with institutions to which they have grown accustomed.' It is a truth more general in its application than he perhaps imagined. Certainly the student of political and legal ideas will in each age be compelled to examine theories which are called essential even when their original substance has, under pressure of new circumstance, passed into some allotropic form. Anyone, for instance, who analyses the modern theory of consideration will be convinced that, while judges do homage to an ancient content, they do …

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Domestic Corporate Tangible And Intangible Invested Capital, Frederick M. Thulin Jan 1919

Domestic Corporate Tangible And Intangible Invested Capital, Frederick M. Thulin

Michigan Law Review

With a tax law on the statute books that fixes a moderate flat rate of taxation on business income, no question of invested capital need be considered. The income tax laws of 1913 and 1916 and the flat rate or normal tax section of the 1917 law and the proposed 1918 law bear out this statement.

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Note And Comment, John B. Waite, Victor H. Lane, Edgar N. Durfee Jan 1919

Note And Comment, John B. Waite, Victor H. Lane, Edgar N. Durfee

Michigan Law Review

Sales - Liability for the Presence of Mice and Other Uncommon Things in Food - A group of recent decisions presents a somewhat farcical conformity with Montesquiet'. thesis that "law" may vary with time and geography. It strikingly illustrates, also, the importance of the particular theory of liability upon which a suit is predicated. The unusual similarity in detail of the operative facts of these cases lends peculiar emphasis to the difference in the judgments rendered.

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Burden Of Proof, Victor H. Lane Jan 1919

Burden Of Proof, Victor H. Lane

Articles

The case of Rowe, Adin.. v. Colorado and Southern R. R. Co. (Tex. Civ. App. 1918), 205 S. W. 731, is typical of the confusion all too common in the use of this term "burden of proof"

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Boycott - Medical Association, Horace Lafayette Wilgus Jan 1919

Boycott - Medical Association, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

The opinion of McCardie, J., (without a jury), in Pratt v. British Medical Association (1919), I K. B. 244, (noted in the MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, June, 1919, p. 704), brilliantly reviewing the English cases, merits a fuller statement of the facts and principles involved than was possible in a short note. The action was by Doctors Burke, Pratt, and Holmes, against the British Medical Association and four of its officers, for damages for conspiracy, slander and libel.

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Determinable Fee - Possibility Of Reverter, Edwin C. Goddard Jan 1919

Determinable Fee - Possibility Of Reverter, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

Professor Gray, in the first edition of his great work, "The Rule Against Perpetuities," Section 31 and following, contended that the Statute Quia Emptores by putting an end to tenure between feoffor and feoffee of an estate in fee simple, incidentally put an end to possibility of reverter to the feoffer on failure of the condition in a determihable fee. Specifically he says that upon dissolution of an eleemosynary corporation a terminable gift to such corporation does not revert to the donor, as is said by Lord Coke, Co. LITT. 13b, but escheats. For reversion depends on tenure, and the …

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Effect At The Situs Rei, Of A Decree Ordering Conveyance Of Foreign Land, Edgar N. Durfee Jan 1919

Effect At The Situs Rei, Of A Decree Ordering Conveyance Of Foreign Land, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

In a recent article in this Review, Prof. Willard Barbour discussed the question indicated by the above title. His cbnclusions may be-briefly slated as follows: that such a decree of a competent court having jurisdiction of the person of the defendant creates a personal obligation upon the defendant which a court of equity at the situs should enforce just as it would a contract or trust concerning this land made in the foreign jurisdiction: and that, as between the States of this Union, the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution makes such enforcement of the foreign decree obligatory. …

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Federal Incorporation, Myron W. Watkins Jan 1919

Federal Incorporation, Myron W. Watkins

Michigan Law Review

The course of development which rate regulation in general in this country passed through is well known. It may be briefly stated as follows: in the early cases it was held that when a state legislature prescribed a scale of maximum charges for a business affected with a public interest they substituted their will for the common law rule of reasonableness, and their determinations were held final and conclusive. This view was gradually modified so as to place a limitation upon the power of the law-making body in accordance with the view that the "use and income of property, as …

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Deeds To Take Effect After Death Of Grantor, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1919

Deeds To Take Effect After Death Of Grantor, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

That Instruments in form of wills may be effective as deeds of conveyance is clear. If a present interest is passed and execution is complete (which includes delivery), the instrument must take effect as a deed. On the other hand, If no interest is to vest until or after death of the maker and there has been no complete execution as a deed, the instrument, if operative at all, must take effect as a will. Difficulties arise when there is a fully executed deed, which, however, is to be postponed in its complete operation until the death of the grantor.

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The 'Source Of Law' In The Panama Canal Zone, Joseph H. Drake Jan 1919

The 'Source Of Law' In The Panama Canal Zone, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

A case just decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, coming to that court from the Canal Zone, shows the great difficulties under which our courts labor when they are called on to interpret and administer the law in our extra-continental possessions. The courts have apparently had the most difficulty in amalgamating the Roman law and the common law in cases involving questions of delictual liability. In the case of Fernandez v. Perez (1906), 202 U. S. 80, the procedural question was presented as to the validity of an action on the case for the wrongful levy of …

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Stare Decisis - Liability Of Municipal Corporations For Tort, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

Stare Decisis - Liability Of Municipal Corporations For Tort, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Courts are charged with the duty of declaring the law. They are also required to decide cases. Either one of those functions might be performed with comparative ease if it were divorced from the other, but when the court is simultaneously obliged to do both, the difficulties are very apparent. To decide a case and at the same time to declare the law means that the court is required to generalize every legal proposition upon which it acts in making its decision. But judges are not omniscient. Who can so fully understand the logical implications and the latent possibilities of …

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Pre-Legal Education, John B. Waite Jan 1919

Pre-Legal Education, John B. Waite

Articles

It was once thought that a lawyer's vocation was chiefly to serve his clients, so that he might bring fame and fortune to himself. The profession of law was considered only a means of livelihood, merely more difficult than clerking and more remunerative, sometimes, than carpentry. To require study for the law was thought an unfair preclusion of embryo breadwinners from an adventure with that particular occupation. Fortunately, the public mind has changed; the practice of law is no longer only a means of livelihood, but has become an important agency in promoting civilization. Some one has likened law to …

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Verdicts, General And Special, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

Verdicts, General And Special, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

The most remarkable thing about this case of Georgia v. Brailsford is that a matter of such elementary importance in the daily administration of the law, after being announced in so dramatic a way by the Supreme Court of the United States at the very threshold of its career, could have dropped into oblivion for a hundred years only to be repudiated in a way hardly less dramatic by a sharply divided court. The controversy here disclosed goes to the very heart of the jury system as it has been developed by the common law and is still almost universally …

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Liability Of Manufacturer To Remote Vender For Defective Automobile Wheel, Horace Lafayette Wilgus Jan 1919

Liability Of Manufacturer To Remote Vender For Defective Automobile Wheel, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

Plaintiff. in February, 19O9. purchased from the Utica Motor Car Company, a Cadillac six-passenger touring car, manufactured by the Cadillac Motor Car Company, of Michigan. The Utica company was a dealer in motor cars, and purchased to resell; it was the original vendee, and the plaintiff was the sub-vendee. The car was used very little until July 31, 1909, when the plaintiff, an experienced driver, while driving the car on a main public road in good condition, at a speed of 12 to 15 miles per hour, was severely and permanently injured by the right front wheel suddenly breaking down …

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Corporations, Shareholders' Right To Have A Dividend Declared And Paid Out Of Surplus, Horace Lafayette Wilgus Jan 1919

Corporations, Shareholders' Right To Have A Dividend Declared And Paid Out Of Surplus, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

In Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. (Mich. 1919), 170, N. W. 668, the questions were not new, and with one exception, the decision was not unusual, but the sums involved were enormos. The Motor Company was incorporated in 1903, under the general manufacturing incorporating act of Michigan (P. A. 232, 1903), for the manufacture and sale of automobiles, motors and devices incident to their construction and operation, with an authorized Capital Stock of $150,000-$100,000 then paid up, $49,000 in cash, $40,000 in letters patent issued and applied for, and $11,000 in machinery and contracts. In 1908 the stock was increased …

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Liquidation Of Damages By Pre-Estimate, Joseph H. Drake Jan 1919

Liquidation Of Damages By Pre-Estimate, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

A freshly minted phrase, if attractive in form, even though it connotes no new idea, will frequently have as extensive a circulation, even in our supreme courts, as would a real concept. In a contract for building two laboratories for the Department of Agriculture, the contractor had agreed that the United States should be entitled to the "fixed sum of $200, as liquidated damages * * * for each and every day's delay" in the completion of the buildings. The court decided that this was a stipulation for liquidated damage because it was the result of a "genuine pre-estimate" of …

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Sales: Liability For The Presence Of Mice And Other Uncommon Things In Food, John B. Waite Jan 1919

Sales: Liability For The Presence Of Mice And Other Uncommon Things In Food, John B. Waite

Articles

A group of recent decisions presents a somewhat farcical conformity with Montesquieu's thesis that "law" may vary with time and geography. It strikingly illustrates, also, the importance of the particular theory of liability upon which a suit is predicated. The unusual similarity in detail of the operative facts of these cases lends peculiar emphasis to the difference in the judgments rendered.

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Juvenile Courts And Privileged Communications, Evans Holbrook Jan 1919

Juvenile Courts And Privileged Communications, Evans Holbrook

Articles

In the case of Lindsey v. People, (Colo., 1919) 181 Pac. 531, the Supreme Court of Colorado has held that Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver could not refuse to testify as to a communication made to him by a child who was at the time of the communication suspected of crime and against whom proceedings were later taken in the Juvenile Court. The decision was by a vote of four to three, and a vigorous dissenting opinion was written by Justice Bailey and concurred in by Justices Scott and Allen.

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Referendum As Applied To Proposed Amendments Of The Federal Constitution, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1919

Referendum As Applied To Proposed Amendments Of The Federal Constitution, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

That various aspects of the fight against the National Prohibition (the i8th) Amendment would result in litigation was to be expected. The attack at present seem& to be based on the use of the provisions for referendum found in a dozen or more of the states the votes of which went to make up the necessary three-fourths. Three very recent decisions or expressions of opinion by state courts of last resort are in this respect extremely interesting.

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Deeds To Take Effect After Death Of Grantor, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1919

Deeds To Take Effect After Death Of Grantor, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

That Instruments in form of wills may be effective as deeds of conveyance is clear. If a present interest is passed and execution is complete (which includes delivery), the instrument must take effect as a deed. On the other hand, If no interest is to vest until or after death of the maker and there has been no complete execution as a deed, the instrument, if operative at all, must take effect as a will. Difficulties arise when there is a fully executed deed, which, however, is to be postponed in its complete operation until the death of the grantor.

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Should A Correct Verdict Be Set Aside Because The Jury Failed To Follow Erroneous Instructions?, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

Should A Correct Verdict Be Set Aside Because The Jury Failed To Follow Erroneous Instructions?, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

One of the common grounds of a new trial is that the verdict is contrary to law. What law is meant,--the law as it really is, or the law that was given to the jury by the court's instruction? Most cases hold to the latter view. It is the duty of the jury to take the law from the court, whether the court in so giving it is right or wrong. Hence, the jury violate their duty if they fail to follow instructions, even if the instructions are wrong, and a verdict based on a breach of the jury's duty …

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Subsequent Impossibility As Affecting Contractual Obligations, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1919

Subsequent Impossibility As Affecting Contractual Obligations, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

Where the law creates a duty or charge and the party is disabled to perform it without any default in him, and hath no remedy over, there the law will excuse him. * * * But where the party by his own contract creates a duty or charge upon himself, he is bound to make it good, if he may, notwithstanding any accident by inevitable necessity, because he might have provided against it by his contract. Paradine v. Jane, Aleyn, 26, a case not really involving a question of impossibility. Most discussions of the effect of subsequent impossibility of performance …

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Enemy Alien Litigants In The English Law, Edwin D. Dickinson Jan 1919

Enemy Alien Litigants In The English Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

It is said that as a general rule an enemy alien cannot bring an action in the English courts. "And true it is, that an Alien enemie, shall maintaine neither reall nor personall action, Donec terrae fuet' communes, that is untill both Nations be in peace." COKE oN LITTLETON, (2 ed.) L. 2, c. 11, sec. 198. LORD STOWELL'S famous dictum in The Hoop (1799), 1 C. Rob. 196, 200, is regarded as a classical statement of the doctrine: "In the law of almost every country, the character of alien enemy carries with it a disability to sue, or to …

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Alienation Of Contingent Remainders, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1919

Alienation Of Contingent Remainders, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

The recent case of Bisby v. Walker, 169 N. W. 467, decided by the Supreme Court of Iowa November 23, 1918, is an interesting instance of an all too common lack of appreciation and understanding of the very fundamentals of property law. Under the will of her grandfather B became entitled to a contingent remainder (at least the court treated it as such) in certain lands; the contingency upon which her taking depended was her being one of the surviving children of her mother at the time of the death of the life tenant, the testator's widow. During the continuance …

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New Trials For Technical Errors, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

New Trials For Technical Errors, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

A witness called to testify is presumed to be of good character. Hence no proof of it is necessary. But out of abundant caution this presumption is fortified by evidence. The witness is thus shown to be in fact exactly what the law presumes him to be. Result-the case is reversed for the commission of this grave and prejudicial error.-Lockett v. State (Ark. 1918), 207 S. W. 55. No one but an American lawyer could treat the above statement seriously. Only an American court could announce so extraordinary a decision. In no other English speaking country would the people tolerate …

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Implied Condition Involving Impossibility Of Performance, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

Implied Condition Involving Impossibility Of Performance, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Early in 1914 the defendants contracted to sell to the plaintiffs a quantity of Finland birch timber. The practice was to send the timber direct by sea from Finnish ports. Before any timber was delivered the war broke out and the presence of German warships in the Baltic made the direct shipment by water impossible. The contract contained no war, force majeure or suspension provision. Held, that the contract was not dissolved, and the defendants were liable for damages for non-delivery of the timber. Blackburn Robbin Co., Lim. v. Allen & Sons, Lim. (1918) 87 L. J. K. B. 1085. …

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Witness--Competency Of An Allopathic Expert In The Field Of Homeopathy--Opinion On Very Fact The Jury Must Determine, Victor H. Lane Jan 1919

Witness--Competency Of An Allopathic Expert In The Field Of Homeopathy--Opinion On Very Fact The Jury Must Determine, Victor H. Lane

Articles

Van Sickle v. Doolittle, (Ia., 1918), 169 N. W. 141, was an action for malpractice against a physician of the homeopathic school of medicine. Upon the trial, a physician of the allopathic school was called, and after testifying that he was unskilled in the science of homeopathy, was allowed to testify that the treatment shown to have been given to the patient by defendant, would produce no physiological effect, and that proper treatment required the giving of such medicines as would produce such effect. This was held error upon the ground that the defendant was called to treat the patient …

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