Sticklers for their rights or fancied rights are rarely deterred from
trying legal conclusions with an adversary by reason of the game not
being worth the candle. In 1819 the Master of the Rolls delivered
judgment in a case he described as the most difficult one he had ever
been called upon to decide; a case which had been before the court for
ten years, and cost each side some four thousand pounds; the matter in
dispute being the ownership of a couple of perches of land of the value
of ten pounds.
Not long ago a traveller by a London tram-car refused, ‘from
principle,’ to pay his fare of two-pence until he arrived at the end
of his journey; and a magistrate sympathising with him, dismissed the
summons obtained by the Company. The latter appealed to the Court of
Queen’s Bench, and got the case remitted to the police court; the
upshot being that the traveller was fined one shilling, and had to pay
the costs incurred by the Company, amounting to something like fifty
pounds!
To pay for defeat is bad enough, but to win and yet lose by victory
is certainly worse. A gentleman once spent two thousand pounds in
establishing his claim to compensation for an infraction of his rights,
and then was awarded one hundred and ten pounds by the assessor of the
damages.—Nor, if his time was of any value to him, did a labourer,
seeking to recover ten shillings from an innkeeper for refusing to
supply him with refreshment, find himself the richer for invoking the
aid of the law. Going into a public-house, he called for half a pint
of ‘four-half,’ for which he put down his penny; but mine host refused
to serve him, so that he was compelled to go farther, to a house on
the opposite side of the street, where they sold beer that ‘did not
suit him so well.’ For this he claimed damages in the county court, and
got them, the judge giving him one shilling.—But more unfortunate was
a Yorkshire wight who won his cause and two shillings damages at York
assizes, but had to go to prison for his own costs.
Something said by a frank-speaking witness in a case tried by Lord
Mansfield impelled his lordship to remark: ‘You have said the parish
funds are often imprudently applied, and you have mentioned that you
once served as churchwarden yourself. If you have no objection, I
should wish to hear what was done with the money at that time?’
‘Why, my lord,’ said the farmer, ‘the money was worse applied when I
was churchwarden than ever I knew it to be in my life.’
‘Indeed,’ said the judge; ‘I should be glad to know how?’
‘Well, my lord, I will tell you,’ replied the witness. ‘A gentleman
left a hundred and twenty pounds to the poor of our parish. We applied
for it again and again; but it wouldn’t do: the executors, the lawyers,
and one and another were glad to keep the money in their hands; for
you know, my lord, it is an old saying, that might can overcome right.
We did not know what to do. I came to your lordship—then Counsellor
Murray—for advice, and you advised us to file a bill in Chancery. We
did so; and after throwing a great deal of good money after bad, we
got what they call a decree; and such a decree it was, that when all
expenses were paid, I reckon we were about a hundred and seventy-five
pounds out of pocket. Now, my lord, I leave you to judge whether the
parish money was not worse employed when I was churchwarden than ever
it was before.’ Lord Mansfield thought it might have been used to
better profit.
When a man makes a formal contract he should be sure it is one the law
will recognise. A would-be Benedict of Hancock, Ohio, offered fifty
dollars reward to any one who would procure him ‘a wife.’ Sam Wickham
introduced a bewitching widow, and the wedding soon came off. Then
Wickham wanted the dollars; but the happy man would not pay. His plea
perhaps was that he had got a widow and not a wife. Sam brought an
action for the money, and lost it, and as he paid his lawyer’s bill,
solemnly abjured the wife-procuring business henceforth for evermore.—A
year or two ago, one Thomas Clegg sued Charles Derrick in the Rochdale
county court upon the following bill of particulars: ‘For finding a
husband valued at fifty pounds, commission five per cent. per annum;
two pounds ten shillings.’ The plaintiff deposed that the wife of
the defendant, when a single woman, contracted with him to get her a
husband, saying, she was twenty-six, not married yet, and feared she
never would be; and if he would get Derrick to marry her, she would
pay him five per cent. upon fifty pounds a year. He brought the pair
together, and considered that the husband was bound to fulfil the
wife’s agreement. But Mr Clegg learned that a contract to procure
marriage between two parties for reward was altogether illegal, and
could not be sustained.
As regards matrimonial contracts, the sexes are assuredly not on an
equality. When Miss Roxalana Hoonan sued Mr Earle for breach of promise
in a Brooklyn court, she admitted the gentleman had never promised
marriage by his hand or tongue, but he had kissed her in company;
and Judge Neilson told the jury that no interchange of words was
necessary, ‘the gleam of the eye and the conjunction of the lips being
overtures when frequent and protracted;’ and thus directed, they made
the defendant pay fifteen thousand dollars for heedlessly indulging in
eye-gleams and lip-conjunctions.
Extreme explicitness would seem to be required when trafficking with
Frenchmen. In 1870, a lady purchased two hundred pounds’ worth of
jewellery in Paris, the jeweller giving her a written promise to
exchange the articles if not approved. She wore them for half-a-dozen
years, and then intimated to the astonished man her desire to change
them for others of newer style. He naturally demurred, arguing, as his
advocate urged before the civil tribunal, that it was unreasonable
that he should be called upon to accept at the price originally paid
for them, trinkets that had been used constantly for six years. The
court nevertheless decided that the agreement did not define the period
during which the exchange might be made, and he must do his customer’s
bidding. This might be law; equity it certainly was not. As we write,
a case of a very similar kind has just been decided in London against
Mr Streeter, the well-known jeweller, who, having promised to take back
a diamond ring if not approved of, was obliged to do so, though his
customer had retained it for three years.
Sharp practice is not always so successful. A gentleman took railway
tickets for himself, his servants, and his horses. After the passengers
were seated, it was found expedient to divide the train, the gentleman
being in the first part. When the second train was about to start,
the cry was ‘Tickets, please.’ The servants having none, they and the
horses were turned out of their places and left behind. The gentleman
sued the Company. The latter brought forward their by-law setting
forth that no passenger would be allowed to enter a carriage without
having first obtained a ticket, to be produced on demand. The court
very properly over-ruled the plea, deciding that by delivering the
tickets to the master, and not to the servants severally, the Company
had contracted with him personally, and could not justify their failure
to carry out the contract they had made. This was perhaps just, but
we should advise that in all such cases each passenger should have
possession of his own ticket.
Hood once figured in a court of law as a defendant in an action for
libel, the plaintiff being Sir John Carr, author of _The Stranger in
Ireland_, _The Stranger in France_, and other tedious books of travel.
Appended to the poet’s _My Pocket-book, or Hints for a right merrie
and conceited Tour, in Quarto, to be called the Stranger in Ireland
in 1805_, was a sketch entitled ‘The Knight leaving Ireland with
regret.’ This was the libel, being, as Sir John or his legal aid put
it, ‘a certain false, scandalous, malicious, ridiculous, and defamatory
representation of the said Sir John Carr, in the form of a man of
ludicrous and ridiculous appearance, holding a pocket-handkerchief to
his face, and appearing to be weeping, and also containing therein a
false, malicious, and ridiculous representation of a man of ridiculous
and ludicrous appearance following the said representation of the
said John Carr, and loaded with and bending under the weight of
three large books, and a pocket-handkerchief appearing to be held
in one of the hands of the representation of a man, and the corners
thereof appearing to be tied together as if containing something
therein, with the printed word _wardrobe_ depending therefrom; thereby
falsely and maliciously meaning and intending to represent, for the
purpose of rendering the said Sir John Carr ridiculous, and exposing
him to laughter, ridicule, and contempt, that one copy of the said
first above-mentioned book, and two copies of the said secondly
above-mentioned book, were so heavy as to cause a man to bend under the
weight thereof, and that his the said Sir John Carr’s wardrobe was very
small, and capable of being contained in a pocket-handkerchief.’ Spite
of this precise specification of the offence committed by the pencil of
the pun-loving poet, twelve good men and true failed to find that the
traveller had been libelled, however much he might have been affronted.
A young man losing his wits through parental thwarting of his
matrimonial aspirations, was placed in an asylum. Having occasion to
leave his charge for a few minutes, the attendant forgot to lock the
door upon him. The lunatic taking advantage of the oversight, slipped
out of the room, made his way to an upper gallery, smashed the window,
and leaped out a thirty feet fall. The shock restored his reason, but
he was crippled for life; and his father brought an action against the
superintendent of the asylum for compensation. The judge ruled that
the superintendent could not be held guilty of neglect because his
subordinate failed in his duty; and so saved the jury the trouble of
assessing damages, which, supposing they set the benefit done to the
patient’s mind against the injury done to his limbs, would have been a
difficult matter for calculation.
Almost as difficult as that left to certain assessors appointed by the
civil tribunal of Melun. The plaintiff in a case tried in that court
alleged that M. de Sagonrac had ordered his gamekeeper to place snares
near his land, in which ‘bats, owls and other night-birds’ were caught;
in consequence of which mice and other vermin had so multiplied that
his crops were spoiled. The tribunal holding that if the facts were so,
the defendant would be liable, appointed three farmers to ascertain
if any damage had been done to the plaintiff’s crops; whether that
damage was due to animals whose presence on the land arose from the
destruction of birds of prey by the defendant’s keeper; and if so, to
assess the amount of the plaintiff’s loss.—A yet more puzzling suit
is still at the time we write awaiting the decision of the American
bench. A landslip in Shodack filled up a creek and turned the water
in a different direction. The proprietor of a mill deprived of its
motive-power, sues the farmer owning the land on which the slip
occurred, not for damages, but to compel him to restore the stream to
its former channel.