Commercial Law Commons^™

Cash Sales, Worthless Checks And The Bona Fide Purchaser, Calvin W. Corman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The owner of goods or chattels in consummating a sale frequently accepts a check in exchange, only to discover that the check is worthless and that in the brief interval before dishonor the goods have been resold to a bona fide purchaser for value. On ascertaining the whereabouts of the goods, the initial owner seeks to repossess them or recover their reasonable value from the holder. A judicial question as to the relative rights of two innocent parties must therefore be determined.

This legal problem has received the attention of law review commentaries' and text writers and has been annotated …

Molding The Corporate Form To Particular Business Situations: Optional Charter Clauses, F. Hodge O'Neal

Vanderbilt Law Review

This paper looks into the usefulness of optional (or as they are sometimes called, "permissive" or "special") charter provisions' in molding the corporate form of business organization to meet the diverse needs of particular business situations. It first examines statutory materials and judicial decisions bearing on the validity and effect of optional provisions. It then considers optional clauses in current use and typical legal and business problems that optional clauses may help to solve. It shows that optional clauses often can be used to clarify the rights and other relations of participants in an enterprise, to avoid disadvantageous corporate "norms," …

Bills And Notes -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, Paul J. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Section 23 of the Negotiable Instruments Law, adopted in all of the forty-eight states,' provides: "When a signature is forged or made without the authority of the person whose signature it purports to be, it is wholly inoperative, and no right to retain the instrument, or to give a discharge therefor, or to enforce payment thereof against any party thereto, can be acquired through or under such signature, unless the party, against whom it is sought to enforce such right, is precluded from setting up the forgery or want of authority.' In Nashville Trust Co. v. Southern Buyers the Tennessee …

Judge Learned Hand And The Limits Of Judicial Discretion, Robert S. Lancaster

Vanderbilt Law Review

Learned Hand stands among the great judges of the Anglo-American legal tradition. He is preeminently the judge's judge. His long judicial career, spanning one of the crucial periods in the development of American law, and his long service on the bench in a circuit where crucial legal issues come into final focus and where a major part of the commercial law of the nation is first enunciated and explained, peculiarly fit him for the task of explaining the judge's function in the American system of law and the court's role in our jural order. His own legal experience, his non-official …

Tax Aspects Of Corporate Business Purchase Agreements Funded With Life Insurance, Hugh J. Morgan Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Death to a member of a closely held business usually will seriously disrupt the workings of the business organization. Also, the estate of the decedent may find his business interest an unwanted asset. A valuable business interest often must be sacrificed because of the pressing need for cash to pay debts, administrative expenses, and estate and inheritance taxes. Thus, death may place the continued existence of the business in jeopardy, make uncertain the interest of decedent's surviving business associates, and make necessary a forced liquidation of decedent's interest in the business at a sacrifice price. Consequently,a business man may find …

Book Reviews, Lloyd P. Stryker, Howard J. Graham (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Reviews

The American Lawyer

Albert P. Blaustein Charles O. Porter with Charles T. Duncan Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1954. Pp. xiii, 360. $5.50.

reviewer: Lloyd Paul Stryker

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American Business Corporations Until 1860; with Special Reference to Massachusetts

By Edwin Merrick Dodd. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. Pp. xix, 524. $7.50

reviewer: Howard Jay Graham

Noise Nuisances: Commercial Enterprises V. Owners Of Residential Property, G. H. Kemker

Vanderbilt Law Review

The problems of the reciprocal use and enjoyment of property by adjacent landowners have become increasingly pronounced in our time of intense urbanization. Salient has been the problem of noise nuisances which frequently result when adjacent property is devoted to the inconsistent uses of industry and residence ownership. This conflict is often a serious one. The enjoyment by the residence owner of his property may be considerably impaired; the abatement of the noise may be at the price of loss of productivity, considerable expense or of not conducting the business at all.' The resulting situation is one which requires a …

Book Reviews, James C. Evans, Samuel E. Stumpf

Vanderbilt Law Review

State Taxation of Interstate Commerce By Paul J. Hartman Buffalo: Dennis & Co., 1953. Pp. xi, 323. $7.50

reviewer: James Clarence Evans

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Church, State and Freedom By Leo Pfeffer Boston: The BeaconPress, 1953. Pp. xvi, 605. $10.00

reviewer: Samuel Enoch Stumpf

Section 112(B)(6): Benefit Or Burden?, Raymond Whiteaker

Vanderbilt Law Review

The general provision in the Internal Revenue Code pertaining to the liquidation of corporations is section 115 (c). Under this section gain or loss on a liquidation is recognized to the extent that the assets received in liquidation exceed or fail to exceed the basis of the share-holder's stock. An exception to this general rule, however, is provided by section 112(b) (6) whereby a parent may liquidate a subsidiary without recognizing any gain or loss on the liquidation if the statutory requirements are met.

The nonrecognition provision first appeared in the Revenue Act of 1935 as section 110 (a).' This …

Personal Liability Of Corporate Officers For Ultra Vires Contracts, J. F. Dirisio

Vanderbilt Law Review

A director or other officer of a corporation, when contracting on its behalf, acts as its agent and the laws of agency are generally applicable. This note presents those problems, apparently unique to corporation law, in the liability of an agent who, with authority, contracts for a principal who has no authority.' Of no concern here are those instances where, either because of ratification or estoppel, the corporation itself is liable, since if the principal is bound the other party has no ground of complaint against the agent.

An officer of a corporation, contracting in excess of or without authority …

Overlapping, Duplication And Conflicts Among Municipal Corporations, Alvin E. Evans

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is a well-known principle of municipal government that there cannot be two municipalities possessed of the same or similar powers, privileges and jurisdiction covering the same territory at the same time. Perhaps the earliest expression of this principle may be found in an early English dictum to that effect where the court explains why such a proposition must be true, viz., "[F]or, instead of good order, that would only be productive of anarchy." Whether in our conglomerate of municipalities we have abided by this principle or have created duplications, overlappings and conflicts due to the vast multiplicity of municipal …

Books Received, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

-- Books Received --

Commercial Law, Cases on

By Robert Braucher

Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1951. Pp. 709. $8.00

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Commercial Transactions, Cases and Materials, Temporary Edition

By Arthur E. Sutherland, Jr. and Bertram F. Willcox

Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1951. Pp. 1251. $9.50

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Conflict of Laws, Cases and Materials, Third Edition

By Elliott E.Cheatham, Herbert F. Goodrich, Erwin N. Griswold and Willis L. M.Reese

Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1951. Pp. 960. $9.00

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Constitution of Powers in a Secular Statte, A.

By Edward S. Corwin

Charlottesville: The Michie Co., 1951. Pp. 126

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Evidence, Cases …

The Problems Of Yesteryear -- Commerce And Due Process, Robert L. Stern

Vanderbilt Law Review

Less than fifteen years ago, there were constitutional problems important enough to stir the country, to threaten the sanctity of the Supreme Court. These were the culmination of at least three decades of judicial controversy, in which the pressure of events brought criticism of the Court's decisions, both in noteworthy dissenting opinions and outside, to a new height. Fifteen years later, there still are difficult and important constitutional problems, and there still is criticism of the Supreme Court's decisions--though on a relatively minor scale. But the issues which rocked more than the legal world in the 1930's and in the …

Factors Influencing Judges In Interpreting Statutes, Arthur W. Phelps

Vanderbilt Law Review

There has been recent discussion of abandoning the literal meaning rule and most of the other rules of statutory construction. A broader principle is favored which will allow the full play of the rational processes of the court. This view has great appeal, and, in terms of freeing judges who apply rules as rules without regard to their object, serves a need. But if it means a sudden release of the judiciary from always starting with a statute as it reads--as it is written--as it has meaning for most of us--it is a harmful suggestion. Law is something more than …