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but shall also forfeit his license and be barred for two years from obtaining another; no dramshop keeper shall sell to any "habitual drunkard," after being notified by the wife, father, mother, brother, sister, or guardian of such habitual drunkard, not to sell or furnish liquor to him, and any such notice shall be deemed to be a continuing notice; if the licensee disregard the notice, the person who gave it may recover of him, by action at law, for each offense, not less than fifty nor more than five hundred dollars.

The constitutionality of the "Scott Liquor Law" of Ohio has been tested before her Supreme Court, and established by its decision. It assesses upon each place where spirituous malt and vinous liquors are retailed the sum of $200 a year, where only malt or vinous liquors are retailed $100 a year; and this assessment is made a lien upon the premises. Twenty per cent of the assessment is added as a penalty for nonpayment when due. The sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday, except by a licensed druggist, on the bona fide prescription of a reputable physician, is made a misdemeanor; and all places where liquor is sold must be closed on the Sabbath. The right is reserved to municipal corporations to regulate and control the sale of beer and native wines on the Lord's day, and to regulate, restrain, and prohibit ale, beer, and porterhouses, and places of habitual resort for tippling and intemperance. Selling liquor at any time to minors or intoxicated persons is made a misdemeanor.

This subject now claims such a large share of public attention that much time and space are given to it in this summary. There is a crying evil abroad which calls for a remedy; and it is to be hoped that the friends of temperance will not be discouraged by the vast difficulties, both in principle and practice, which they encounter; yet there is much ground for fear that the intemperate pursuit of their cause by its friends may trench so far upon individual rights, as to produce reaction and ultimate failure.

PRESERVATION AND ADORNMENT OF PARKS AND HIGHWAYS.

Missouri and Nevada have passed joint resolutions instructing their senators, and requesting their representatives to use all honorable means to prevent the leasing of Yellowstone National Park, and to hasten the enactment of a law for its government, protecting its natural curiosities, timbers, lakes and rivers, and prohibiting the destruction of its animals, birds, and fishes; and New York has passed an act authorizing the selection, location, and appropriation of certain lands in the village of Niagara Falls as a State reservation for the purpose of preserving the scenery of the falls of Niagara.

New York holds out encouragement for the planting of shade trees on highways, by abating the highway tax of any person who does set them out, to the amount of one dollar for every four trees, the abatement not to exceed one-fourth of the tax.

Rhode Island has endeavored to preserve "Easton's Beach in Middletown and Newport" by making it a misdemeanor for any one to remove sand or gravel from it.

All this in the direction of a more cultivated taste, and a higher civilization.

MISCELLANEOUS.

In addition to the subjects of legislation which have been noticed, several of the States have made noteworthy changes in their statute law which can only be classed as miscellaneous.

Alabama has created a department of agriculture by a statute which also provides for the inspection of fertilizers.

Vermont has enacted a very stringent statute requiring all commercial fertilizers offered for sale within her boundaries to be branded with the weight of the sacks, constituent parts, etc., and making a violation of the law a misdemeanor.

In Arkansas a defendant cast in an ejectment suit, who has made improvements on the property in litigation in the bona fide belief that he was the legal owner of the property, shall be compensated by the successful plaintiff for the value of the improvements before he can be ejected.

Arkansas, Colorado and Pennsylvania have passed statutes requiring that assignees of insolvent debtors for the benefit of creditors shall enter into bond with surety for the faithful discharge of their duties, and file in court reports of their actings and doings. Illinois has enacted that involuntary assignments, laborers' and servants' wages earned within the preceding three months shall be paid as preferred claims, while in Wisconsin assignments made for the benefit 'of creditors, giving preference to one creditor over another, except for the wages of laborers, servants, and employees earned within six months prior thereto, shall be void. Bearing upon a kindred subject is the statute of Ohio, providing that claims not exceeding 150 for manual labor performed for a deceased person within twelve months of his death, shall be considered as preferred debts against his estate.

In Colorado the bodies of such persons dying in any alms house, prison, hospital, house of correction, or jail "as may be required to be buried at the public ex pense," shall be surrendered "to any licensed physician in the State, to be by him used for the advancement of anatomical science, preference being given to the faculty of legally organized medical colleges or schools of anatomy, for their use in the instruction of medical students; " but no such body shall be surrendered if the deceased during his last illness requested to be buried, or if his relatives or friends claim his body for burial within twenty-four hours, or if he was a stranger or traveller who died suddenly before making himself known. The remains after dissection must be decently buried.

Missouri, by joint resolution of her Legislature, has declared the former bankrupt law of the United States to have been productive of much harm, and instructed her senators, and requested her representatives in Congress to oppose the enactment of a new one.

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Nevada and Ohio have abolished the distinction between instruments under seal and those not under seal, the former enacting that "the word 'seal,' and the initial letters L. S." "and other words, letters or characters of like imports, opposite the name of the signer of any instrument in writing, are hereby declared unnecessary to give such instrument legal effect and any omission to use them by the signer of any instrument shall not be construed to impair the validity of such instrument"; and the latter that private seals are abolished, and the affixing of what has been known as a private seal to any instrument whatever shall not give to such instrument any additional force or effect, or in any way change the construction thereof." Bonds and deeds and other instruments conveying real estate shall be signed in the presence of two witnesses.

Nevada has passed a special act to admit to probate a paper purporting to be the will of one George G. Blair, as though it had been sealed with the seal of the testator.

All goods manufactured in the New Jersey State prison must hereafter be "stamped in a legible and conspicuous manner with the words manufactured in the New Jersey State prison.'"

A joint resolution of the New Jersey Legislature requests Congress to abolish compulsory pilotage upon vessels engaged in the coasting trade, and another au

thorizes the governor to prepare and have presented to each officer and man of the New Jersey battalion a medal to commemorate their good conduct at the Yorktown centennial.

New York has passed an act providing that executors authorized by will to sell real estate may, unless the will otherwise directs, sell either at public or private sale, and on such terms as may seem to them most advantageous to the parties interested; and also a second act providing that where two or more executors, as such or as trustees, have power given them to sell, mortgage or lease, and any of them shall fail to qualify, the other or others shall enjoy the power fully.

New York has enacted that homestead property shall not be exempt from sales for taxes, Vermont has made the tool chest of a mechanic exempt from levy and sale, and Wisconsin has declared that the earnings of all married persons, or persons having a family to support, shall be exempt for three months to the extent of sixty dollars a month.

North Carolina now requires that conditional sales of personal property shall be reduced to writing, and recorded.

Pennsylvania has passed "an act prohibiting the levying of license tax upon persons taking orders for goods by sample for individuals or companies who pay the tax at their chief place of business," of which I have seen only the title; and has also enacted that when any wire used for electric purposes is attached to, or shall extend over any building or land, no prescriptive right to maintain it there shall arise by lapse of time.

An act to establish and determine the boundary line between Rhode Island and Massachusetts has been passed by the former State, to take effect only when a similar act shall have been passed by the latter.

Wisconsin has enacted that no contract for the purchase, sale, transfer, or delivery of personal property, to be delivered and paid for at a future day, shall be void when either buyer or seller shall in good faith intend to perform the contract.

MAINE LEGISLATION.

All the information I have been able to obtain from the State of Maine is that the Legislature, after sitting for a short while, adjourned over until late in August for the purpose of embodying the acts of the present session in the new revision which has been provided for. The restoration of the death penalty is the only noteworthy act to which my attention has been called. Her Legislature is probably now in session, as is also the Legislature of Georgia.

CONCLUSION.

A closer examination into the year's legislation than is accomplished by this hurried glance, while it makes an exhibit of much that tends to ameliorate the condition of man and improve his belongings, yet leaves us painfully conscious of the merely tentative and experimental character of nearly all these efforts. The evils which press at the moment are attempted to be legislated out of existence by a single blow. Real or fancied wrongs are to be righted by partial and short-sighted enactments. Disappointed suitors procure the passage of laws to give them a better chance next time. A very small number of these statutes either assert or adhere to any great principle of action, or give evidence of any high moral standard, or of that practical sagacity, familiarly known as common sense, which will enable them to stand the scrutiny and test of time, and undue haste, inconsiderate action, controlling prejudice and temporary passion are written all over them.

How pleasant and refreshing to us, gentlemen of the Association, to turn from the consideration of this most imperfect statutory mechanicism to the law

as we find it written in the decisions and the opinions of the great judges of England and America; to those expositions based upon the immutable principles of right and justice, which settle principles on such a firm foundation as to furnish guides for all future ac tion; opinions, which embody enlarged views as to the relations which individuals sustain to each other and to the State; as to the true office and duty of govern ment, and the great moral forces which should control enlightened communities. When we see how satisfactory, how all pervading, how permanent the results thus accomplished by our profession, as a whole, it is indeed cause for grateful and intense pride in its achievements and traditions.

Much has been said, and sometimes flippantly, of the encroachments by made-law, even though accusations thus made are not entirely without foundation. How much has been thus done in the announcements of great truths and principles of action from the bench, which now constitute the treasury of the law! If Lord Mansfield made the law merchant of England, which also became that of America; if Chief-Justice Marshall made the Constitutional Law of the United States, as has been charged, how well did they build. Who so rash to-day as to question the amazing skill and complete success of those peerless architects? How many decades, and how many legislatures, composed each of hundreds of men, would it take to establish such principles, work out such beneficent results, and insure their acceptance by the coming generations!

We are certainly excusable if such reflections as these cause us to magnify our office and glory in our vocation. Whatsoever there is of capacity for good in us can be best developed by an association like this. We live in an age, which illustrates in every department of human action, the power of associated effort.

In the realm of those moral forces, with which we have specially to deal, is not the superior power of associated effort intensified? Whether we like it or not, we must be powerful for good or evil. Great, indeed, is our responsibility.

There may be differences of opinion as to the character of the age in which we live, whether it is more than ever before a money-loving age, certainly it is a money-getting age beyond precedent. Perhaps men loved "filthy lucre" in the luxurious days of controlling influences then against this absorbing Greece and Rome as they do now, but there were power, which do not now exist. The real trouble with us to-day is not the mere love of money, as a possession and a treasure for the pursuit of wealth is not only a right, but often a duty, and the use of it when acquired, a great pleasure and high privilege. but it is the self-prostration of society before it as a dignity, a principality, a power. In this worship is often surrendered talent, learning, every high and noble aspiration, and even the gentler graces and more refined charities of life. Against this deification and absorbing power of wealth, what stronger bulwarks can be interposed than the associated resistance, and the example of an intellectual and learned profession; powerful in influence, intimate and controlling in its necessary connection with every variety of human affairs; trained to vigorous and independent thought and effective speech. If it but dare assert its dignity and character, there is no social agent which has half its power to curb and reform society. But to accomplish all this we must be true, and brave as well. Not only must honor be the guide of our own conduct, but we must make no terms with dishonor, for demoralization often comes not so much from joining in the out-right commission of sin, as from the halting, unmanly acquiescence, by which we condone it.

The theme

pleasant, and the glow of excitement causes me to transgress.

I close with the testimony of those whose higher claim and greater achievements in the profession justify me in substituting their words for my own: "The influences of our profession are as wide as society: its duties are arduous, refined, delicate and responsible; its honors and rewards, when fairly sought and earned, may fill the measure of a great ambition; we cannot be too wise, too learned, or too virtuous for it; we can make all knowledge tributary, and yet not transcend its compass." Still another witness-I bear this testimony concerning our great profession: The more I have seen of it, the higher has risen my esti. mate of its dignity, usefulness and importance. *** In it may be found as noble, truthful and generous men as ever adorned the pulpit or the Senate; below either it can never fall, so long as those who practice it are faithful to the trusts committed to their hands by its great master.

JURISDICTION OF JUSTICES COURT AS TO MARRIED WOMAN,

NORTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT. FEBRUARY TERM, 1883.

DOUGHERTY V. SPRINKLE.*

An action against a married woman, upon a promise to pay for work done on premises owned and held as her separate estate, is not cognizable in the court of a justice of the peace. Such court is a common-law court, and its jurisdiction does not therefore embrace causes of an equitable nature.

At law, she cannot bind herself personally, and hence her contract will not be enforced against her in personam, but equity will so far recognize it as to make it bind her separate estate, and will proceed in rem against it; such estate, being regarded as a sort of artificial person created by the courts of equity, is the debtor and liable to her engagements.

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Platt D. Walker, for plaintiff.

Jones and Johnston, for defendants.

RUFFIN, J. The single question] presented in this appeal is, whether the court of a justice of the peace can entertain an action against a married woman, brought upon a promise to pay for work done upon premises owned and held as her separate property.

In Fisher v. Webb, 84 N. C. 44, a doubt was expressed as to whether that court had jurisdiction of any cause arising ex contractu against the feme covert, but as the point did not directly arise in that case, and was not necessarily involved in its decision, it was not intended to conclude it. It was therefore fairly open to the plaintiff to be raised, as he has seen fit to do, in the present case.

Further reflection however, and a more particular examination into the precedents, ancient and modern, serve to confirm us in the impressions we then had, and make it clear to our own minds, at least, that no such jurisdiction can be exercised by the court of a justice of the peace, seeing, that according to all authorities, his is but a common-law court, and that his jurisdiction does not embrace causes of a peculiarly equitable nature. See Fisher v. Webb, supra; Murphy V. McNeill, 82 N. C. 221; McAdoo v. Callum, 86 id. 419; Lutz v. Thompson, 87 id. 334. At law, a feme covert is incapable of making a contract of any sort, and any attempt of hers to do so is

*Appearing in 88 North Carolina Reports.

not simply voidable, but absolutely void. If however she be possessed of separate property, a court of equity will so far recognize her agreement as to make it a charge thereon. But even in that case and in that court, her contract has no force whatever as a personal obligation or undertaking on her part.

It is said in Green v. Branton, 1 Dev. Eq. 500, that the promise of a married woman, except as it may affect her separate property, is held alike in equity and at law to be void, and that there is no court but what regards her promise, merely as such, to be a nullity.

In Hulme v. Tenant, 1 Brown, C. C. 16, Lord Thurlow declared that he knew of no instance in which a contract of a feme covert had been held to warrant a personal decree against her, and that the only result of an action against her could be "to fetch forth her separate property and make it liable to her engagements."

The rule laid down in 2 Story's Eq. Jur., § 1397, and which the author says is in conformity with all previous decisions, is that at law a married woman cannot bind herself personally, and that not even a court of equity has power to enforce a contract against her in personam; but that if she have separate property, the court may proceed in rem against it.

Pollock in his work upon Contracts, 69, says, that a word is needed to express just what that is, which in the case of a person sui juris would be a contract, but in the case of a married woman, cannot be a contract, because it creates no personal obligation even in equity; and he adds, "that the separate estate is regarded as a sort of artificial person created by the courts of equity, and represented by the beneficial owner as an agent with full powers, somewhat in the same way as a corporation sole is represented by the person constituting it for the time being; and as a contract made by the agent of a corporation can bind nothing but the corporate property, so the engagement of a married woman can bind nothing but her separate estate."

Carrying out this same idea, it was declared in In re Grissell, L. R. C., 12 Ch. D. 484, that it was a fallacy to suppose that a married woman is a debtor, because she is liable to have proceedings taken against her to obtain satisfaction of a debt out of her separate estate; for that, "it is not the woman, as a woman, who becomes the debtor, but her engagement has made her property, which is settled to her separate use, a debtor and liable to satisfy the engagement."

The very nature of the pleadings, in an action of this sort, seems to point to such a conclusion.

In Francis v. Wigzell, 1 Madd. 258, the vice-chancellor declared that inasmuch as a feme covert could not contract generally, she could not be sued generally, as any other defendant; but that it was necessary, in order to render her liable, that the bill should aver that she was possessed of separate property and had so contracted as to charge it. Accordingly in that case the bill was dismissed, because it failed to allege the existence of a separate estate, and instead of seeking to charge a particular fund, sought to charge the defendant personally.

There can be no question made, that as our courts were originally constituted, with their functions as courts of law and courts of equity kept distinct, the entire jurisdiction of actions brought to enforce satisfaction of the engagements of femes covert was committed to the equity courts, to the exclusion of the others whose judgments are always in personam, and could not be otherwise, owing to their very organization.

Nor was there any change wrought in this particular by the alterations made in our court system under the Constitution of 1868, or by the adoption of the statute

known as the married woman's act. It was in reference to these very alterations and the effect of the statute, that the court declared in Pippen v. Wesson, 74 N. C. 437, and Huntley v. Whitner, 77 id. 392, that no deviation from the common law had been produced thereby, as respects either the power of a feme covert to contract, the nature of her contract, or the remedy to enforce it; that as a contract, merely her promise is still as void as it ever was, with no power in any court to proceed to judgment against her in personam; and that it was only through the equitable powers of the court that satisfaction of her engagements could be enforced as against her separate estate, and then only in case they were seen to be for her advantage.

The nature of the pleadings is substantially the same as under the former system of our courts, and it is essential, in order to establish a right to a special judgment against her separate estate, that the complaint should show, not only that she has such estate, but that her promises are such as by the statute she is rendered competent to make. It was for the want of just such allegations, and because the complaint demanded a personal judgment against the feme defendant in Pippen v. Wesson, supra, that the demurrer was sustained and the action dismissed. The mandate of the statute too, that whenever an execution may issue against a married woman, it shall direct the levy and collection of the amount of the judgment against her from her separate property, and not otherwise (C. C P., § 259), presupposes that all these requisites appear of record, and that the existence of such separate property is fixed by the judgment.

Our conclusion therefore is, that the action is outside of the jurisdiction of the justice in whose court it began, and that the same must be dismissed.

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S. A. Besson, for plaintiff.

E. D. Deacon, for defendant.

KNAPP, J. The declaration, to which the defendant has filed a demurrer, avers that the plaintiffs prepared, vended and sold, for profit, a certain kind of smoking tobacco called and well-known to the public as "Mrs. G. B. Miller & Co.'s Best Smoking Tobacco," which they were accustomed to sell in packages wrapped in blue paper with the words " Mrs. G. B. Miller & Co.'s Best Smoking Tobacco, 97 Columbia street, New York," printed thereon; and that the defendant, intending to injure them in their sales and deprive them of their profits, deceitfully and fraudulently prepared and made smoking tobacco in packages of the same size, shape, color and appearance, with the words "The Mrs. C. B. Müller & Co. Best Smoking Tobacco, 437% Grove street, Jersey City," in imitation of the goods of the plaintiffs, and fraudulently represented and sold the same as the article manufactured, vended and sold by the plaintiffs, when, in truth, the plaintiffs had not manufactured the same; by reason of which the

*To appear in 16 Vroom's (45 N. J. Law) Reports.

plaintiffs were deprived of the sale of their goods and the consequent profits.

The question is whether this state of facts presents an actionable injury.

It is not called for in this case to follow the demurraut in his discussion of the rules specially applicable to suits for the appropriation of others' trade-marks. The case here presents a grievance analogous to that in some, but not all its features.

Trade marks are protected as such, as a species of property; not that one can have an exclusive right in the sigus, words or symbols used, per se; because one may stamp his cloth with the same mark or sign that another has acquired the exclusive right to use on his manufacture of iron. But when one has caused a particular species of manufacture to be characterized by certain marks or symbols, and given the article such currency in trade that it is identified with the mark, the law holds him to be possessed of a property right in such mark in connection with that species of manufacture, which it protects by action or injunction against any unlicensed use of it by others. Intentional fraud in such use is not essential to entitle the owner to protection. The injury is complete if the same label or mark is used which recommends the article to the public by the established reputation of another. Coffeen v. Bunton, 4 McLean, 516; Dale v. Smithson, 12 Abb. Pr. 237; Ainsworth v. Walmsley, L. R., 1 Eq. 518. To violate such right is a legal fraud.

But there is another type of injury to the same substantial right, distinguished mainly by the essential feature presented, of actual fraudulent intent in its perpetration. This wrong the courts have ever been equally swift to redress. It is said that the markets are free and open to make and sell any lawful commodity which one has sufficient skill and energy to fabricate and vend, unless there exist in some other the protection which the law of patents affords, and this is doubtless true; but every one should be and is required to depend for his success upon his own char acter and fame, and the quality of his own productions. He may not sail under false colors and sell his productions for those of others. To do so is to impose upon the public, and especially to defraud him whose right place in the market is filled with spurious goods. That is not fair competition; it is closer akin to piracy. The inventor of an unpatented article has no exclusive right to make and vend it; but if others make and sell it, they have no right to put it upon the public as the manufacture of the inventor, nor to adopt his label or trade-mark, nor one so like his as to lead the public to suppose that the article to which it is affixed is the manufacture of the inventor. Davis v. Kendall, 2 R. I. 566.

The legal wrong is in fraudulently supplanting the maker of the genuine article by a false one sold as his own; whether it be by the adoption of his mark or by any deceit and false representation likely to deceive the public and accomplish that end, is material only in form. The injurious result is the same if the wrong be committed in either way. The cases differ only in their requirements of proof.

In Wotherspoon v. Currie, 5 L. R., H. L. Cas. 508, it is said by Lord Chelmsford that where a trade-mark is not actually copied, fraud is a necessary element in the consideration of every question of this description -that is, that the party accused must have done the act complained of with the fraudulent design of passing off his own goods as those of the party entitled to the exclusive use of the trade-mark.

Crawshay v. Thompson, 4 M. & G. 357, is a case in pointed illustration of the legal rule in frauds of this character. The declaration there alleged that the defendants fraudulently sold certain bars of iron, as and for, and under the false color and pretense that the

same were bars of iron of the genuine manufacture of the plaintiff. The right of recovery on proof of the averment was not questioned. The earlier English cases bearing on the subject are there referred to and need no citation here.

The declaration here does not count upon the unlawful adoption by defendant of plaintiff's trade-mark, but charges that the defendant sold his goods under the representation and pretense that they were the genuine goods manufactured by the plaintiff, which representations and pretenses were false and fraudulent; whereby they were to an extent injurious to themshut out of the market; and that as devices in aid of their fraud, they fabricated deceptive imitations of the plaintiff's label and packing. The cases upon this subject all hold this to be an actionable injury. The underlying principle is that one, who by making representations, knowingly false, causes injury to another, is liable for the consequences of his falsehood. The following are cases bearing upon this subject. Sykes v. Sykes, 3 B. & C. 541; Archbold v. Sweet, 5 C. & P. 219; Blofeld v. Payne, 4 B. & Ad. 410; Thompson v. Winchester, 19 Pick. 214; Lemoine v. Santon, 2 E. D. Smith, 343; Marsh v. Billings, 7 Cush. 322; Holmes v. Holmes, 37 Coun. 278; Morison v. Salmon, 2 M. & G. 385.

In the case last cited the declaration used was in form and in all its essential averments like the one before us, and was brought under criticism on motion in arrest of judgment. The point principally made against it was not that action would not lie for such fraud, but on the sufficiency of the averment of a false representation by the defendant that the goods sold by him had been prepared by the plaintiff. It was held sufficient by all the judges, and judgment passed for the plaintiff.

A precedent is found for this declaration in Sykes v. Sykes, above referred to. Also in 2 Chitty Pl. 697, 698.

The case of Marsh v. Billings, supra, was an action grounded upon the same character of injury as that counted upon by the plaintiff in this suit. The defendant there was charged with holding himself out as, and falsely representing himself to be, authorized by the proprietor of a large hotel to convey guests between the hotel and the principal railway station, and using upon his coaches the signs and devices with which the plaintiff marked his carriages, thus obtaining passengers in fraud of the plaintiff, who by agreement with the proprietor of the hotel, had the exclusive patronage of the house and the sole right to place the hotel name upon his vehicles. The same principle was there applied, and the right of action maintained-not on the ground that the defendant might not rightfully carry passengers between the hotel and railway, nor on the ground that he might not put the name of the hotel on his coaches as indicating where he would carry persons to whom he might honestly engage his services, but on the ground that he could not fraudulently take away the plaintiff's passengers by passing himself off upon the public as possessed of patronage and privilege which the plaintiff held exclusively, or designedly use in aid of his fraud the signs which the plaintiff had rightfully adopted.

Indeed, the cases are in entire harmony in maintaining the principles upon which the plaintiff's action proceeds.

The demurrer should be overruled, with costs.

CONDITIONS LIMITING LIABILITY AS TO TELEGRAMS.

WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT, MAY 31, 1883. HEIMAN V. WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH Co. Telegraph blanks upon which messages were written contained this notice: "No claim for damages shall be valid unless presented in writing within twenty days

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Plaint

ORTON, J. The main question in this case, and on which, more than all others, the verdict was directed, was whether the plaintiffs were bound by the condition in the printed rules and regulations of the defendant company, which if accompanying the original message to be sent, or known by the plaintiff to exist in respect to such message, became the contract between the parties "that no claim for damages shall be valid unless presented in writing within twenty days from sending the message. The testimony of the plaintiffs themselves was that for many years they had used the blanks of the company containing these rules in respect to night messages, and one of the plaintiffs wrote in pencil the address of the message in question, together with the date, upon one of the blanks. That the plaintiffs were bound by these rules as the contract between the parties in respect to this message, in view of the evidence, is too clear for argument or question. The message was sent in the night of the seventh day of May and was received promptly at the company's office in New York, and immediately sent by messenger to the St. Nicholas Hotel, the place of the address, where one of the plaintiffs was stopping at the time, and was not handed to him, only because there was an error in the name of Heiman by the use of a letter "r" therein instead of "i," which made the name Herman." The dispatch however was handed to the proper person on the fourteenth day of May. This delay, it is alleged, occasioned the plaintiffs' damages. No claim for such damages was presented to the company in writing or otherwise until the thirty-first day of May following, more than twenty days from seuding the message on the seventh day of May. There is no chance for construction in the meaning of the word "sending." It was sent only once as a telegraph message, and that was on the night of seventh. It is contended that the delay in receiving the message, occasioned by the mistake or error of the company, should modify this condition and extend the time. I know of no such rule of law where a reasonable time is still left, after knowledge of the mistake, to give such notice. This principle is recognized in respect to limitation laws, as well as limitations of time in contracts, in cases too numerous to be cited. What the rule might be where the whole time had elapsed before knowledge of the mistake or neglect we need not consider. Here there was time enough left for such notice in the time between the fourteenth and the twenty-seventh of May. It is further contended that this condition is unreasonable and void on grounds of public policy. There can be no test as to whether this length of time is reasonable or not, except the possibility of giving the notice within such time under ordinary circumstances, without unreasonable expedition or haste. By that criterion twenty days' time is as reasonable as 30, 60, or 90. The time beyond that required to give the notice is an unused and neglected excess for such purpose, and can be of no possible advantage without the intervention of unexpected or unnecessary conditions, against which no law or contract can provide.

The only question remaining is whether such a condition is valid. Such a condition has been held obli gatory in insurance, freight, and other contracts, and in legislation where damages have resulted from ac

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