Financial Details, Kent Memorial

The following is a statement, with such details as I should think would answer the purposes of other chapters, of the ways and means adopted for securing the present building just completed at Ann Arbor

Admission to the Bar

This article is written in the belief that the hour is here when some changes in admissions to the bar should be urged and urged again, when some things often thought and discussed in certain assemblies should be openly and frankly talked over with the profession at large

NON-ASSIGNMENT PROVISIONS IN LAND CONTRACTS

Many a sale of real estate is made to a purchaser who lacks the ready cash to pay the price. A deed of conveyance may be given with a mortgage back for the unpaid portion of the purchase price. But more and more in recent years the vendor has given a contract to convey conditioned upon the making of periodical payments of stipulated amounts, a deed to be given when the whole or a stated portion of the purchase price has been paid. The initial payment may be very small, and not infrequently the periodic payments are little more than a fair rental. Very often such a sale differs little from a lease with option to purchase and apply the rent payments upon the purchase price. The seller at first has little security for the performance of the contract except his claim on the property sold and his confidence in the purchaser

The Commodity Clause of the Hepburn Act

The Supreme Court of the United States has added another to the interesting line of cases construing the so-called Commodity Clause of the HEPBURN ACT of 1906. In United States v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co. and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Coal Co., decided on June 21, 1915, 35 Sup. Ct. 873, the court reversed the decree of the District Court as reported in 213 Fed. 240, and found the relation and contract between the Railroad Company and the Coal Company to be in violation of the HEPBURN ACT and the SHERMAN ACT

Contract Limitations of the Common Carrier\u27s Liability

When Mr. Justice NELSON, in the New Jersey Steam Navigation Company v. Merchants Bank, speaking of the power of a common carrier by special agreement to restrict his obligation, said for the court: We are unable to perceive any well founded objection to the restriction, he opened the way for an amount of litigation which, in volume and expense, both to carriers and shippers, scarcely finds its equal on any other question. The Supreme Court of North Carolina was well within the limit when it said: The right of a common carrier to limit or diminish his general liability by a special contract has given rise to as much, if not more discussion and contrarities of opinion than any other question of law. Mr. SCHOULER, in his work on Bailments and Carriers, has well said: The reports bear ample record of the unflagging perseverance with which the common carriers seek to make decreased responsibility to the public the price of affording to the public increased facilities of transportation; of his quickness in coaxing, entrapping, even coercing, his customers in accomplishing this furtherance of his own ends. The far reaching consequences of a single sentence in a judicial opinion, concerning what had generally been, and may still be, regarded as at best a doubtful question, can hardly be better exemplified than by the consequences flowing from the opinion of Mr. Justice NELSON, above referred to

Escheat - How State Acquires Title

Escheat is of feudal origin, and properly applied only to land which on failure of heirs or for certain other reasons, fell in to the lord under whom it had been held. Personal property without an owner, as bona vacantia, became the property of the crown. In re Bond [1901] 1 Ch. 15. In the United States escheat is used more broadly, but usually arises when the owner of property dies intestate without heirs. Our alienage laws have generally removed disabilities of aliens to take, but in some jurisdictions there may still be escheat because of alienage, see 5 MICH. L. REV., 463. In others mortmain statutes provide for escheat of certain property held by corporations, Louisville School Board v. King, 127 Ky; 824, 15 L. R. A. N. S. 379, note, and in some states property like bank deposits, if long unclaimed, will vest in the state, State v. First Nat. Bank of Portland, 61 Oreg. 551, Ann. Cas. 1914 B 153, note; Mich. C. L. Secs. 321 ff., though in such cases the state is a kind of trustee for the absent owner, Atty. Gen. v. Provident Inst. for Savings, 201 Mass. 23; Mich. C. L. Sec. 338

Public Utilities—Franchise Rates as Affected by the World War

The economic convulsions due to the World War are abundantly reflected in the relations between the public and their public utilities operating under franchises fixing rates for service. The enormous rise in cost of labor and materials has, in many cases, so reduced the net income of such utilities as to make it a negative quantity at existing franchise rates. The utilities are crying to be saved from bankruptcy, but the unfortunate suspicion bred by past dealings of many such companies has made the public skeptical, and perhaps in many cases entirely unreasonable. In some cases plain selfishness may explain the attitude on both sides. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently held that a contract is still a contract, notwithstanding the critical conditions caused by the war. Columbus Ry. P. & L. Co. v. Columbus, (U. S. 1919) 39 Sup. Ct. 349, (see 17 MICH. L. REV. 689), followed in Michigan Ry. Co. v. Lansing, (1919) 260 Fed. 322. Though the German steamship company may have been justified in turning back and failing to carry out its contract to deliver at Plymouth and Cherbourg gold shipped on the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, since the imminent danger of capture by a belligerent which would have ended possibility of performance excused performance entirely, Kronprinzessin Cecilie, 244 U. S. 13, yet this does not affect the general principle that if a party charge himself with an obligation possible to be performed he must abde by it. unless performance is rendered impossible by the act of God, the law, or the other party. Unforeseen difficulties will not excuse performance. lb. The very essence of a contract is that the contractor takes the risk within the limits of his undertaking. Day v. U. S., 245 U. S. i59; North Hempstead v. Pub. Serv. Corp., 176 N. Y. S. 621. The courts cannot relieve nor make new contracts for the parties. Muscatine Lighting Co. v. Muscatine, (1919) 256 Fed. 928

Determinable Fee - Possibility of Reverter

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 Statute by destroying tenure ends possibility of reverter. In his third edition, Section 40a, he notes that since the second edition of his book three cases have held contra,--North v. Graham. 235 Ill. 178, Pond v. Douglass, 106 Me. 85, and Board of Chosen Freeholders v. Buck, 779 N. J. Eq. 472. These follow a dictum in First Universalist Society v. Boland, 155 Mass. 171, which he considers as opposed to a case not to be distinguished from it, the leading case of Brattle Square Church v. Grant, 3 Gray 142. The learned author regards Lord Coke\u27s statement that land of a corporation upon its dissolution reverted to the donor or grantor, while upon the death of a natural person without heirs his land escheated, as based on cases which do not uphold him, and the rule as not surviving his retirement, for Johnson v. Norway Winch 37, 1622, shows a great doubt on the part of the judges, and though the report does not give the final decision on the point, Lord Hale\u27s MSS. cited Co. LITT. 13b, Harg. note, say they held the land escheated. Lord Coke seems to have but a dictum in one case to support him, and only one case that has ever followed it, GRAY Section 51

Interstate Commerce Commission - Intrastate Rates

The marvelous possibilities for collision between State and Nation involved in our dual form of government are nowhere better or more often exhibited than in commerce regulation. We have long been learning the definition of the commerce which the constitution gives Congress power to regulate. It is only recently that we are finding how this power reaches over into purely intrastate business done by a carrier also engaged in interstate commerce. That nearly all rail carriers are now engaged in such business, even when their lines are wholly intrastate, has been often illustrated under the Second Employer\u27s Liability Act. In Employers\u27 Liability Cases, 207 U. S. 463, Congress was warned off the State preserves, only to prove that the First Act was wrong, not in its sweep, but in its failure to save to the states in words what seems lost to them in fact. The Second Act stands, Second Employers\u27 Liability Cases, 223 U. S. 1, and seems to reach practically every railway employee, because however much of his time is devoted to purely intrastate business, some at least is almost sure to touch interstate traffic, and this is enough to bring him under control of Federal law. See the very recent case of Cholerton v. D. J. and C. Ry. (Mich., 1917), 165 N. W. 606, holding that a track hand of a railroad wholly in the State of Michigan is under Federal Act

Real Significance of the Proposed Michigan Beer and Wine Amendment

DISCUSSION of proposed prohibitory amendments to Constitutions, State or Federal, are usually regarded as part of the wet and dry fight in which lawyers are interested only as citizens. Before the recent Cleveland Meeting of the American Bar Association the bar of the country was circularized by a protest, signed by a number of very well known lawyers, urging the bar to take action against putting into the fundamental law, the Constitution, such matters as the regulation of what the people shall drink. These lawyers presented their case at the Cleveland meeting and vigorously attempted to induce the American Bar Association to go on record against such amendments. The effort failed, possibly because it was felt that the American Bar Association had not hitherto exhibited any such concern over this tendency, already noticeable for years, to cumber State Constitutions with matters that should properly be left to legislation, as exhibited, for example, in such constitution monstrosities as the Constitution of Oklahoma. It would be hard to explain to the public how the control of the liquor traffic by constitutional amendment had so suddenly aroused the patriotic zeal of the bar in opposition, especially in view of the fat fees the traffic had paid in the past, and was now proposing to pay, to individual lawyers. But whatever may be said about the propriety of such action by such a body, there can be no doubt of the right of every lawyer as an individual and a citizen to oppose as vigorously as he will such uses of a constitution. Much can be urged on both sides. Indeed there are many good reasons for the claim that we in this country have done to death the use of written constitutions, and even that the States would be much better off without any. The liberties of person and property are fully safeguarded by the Federal Constitution, and it is more than possible, as some have suggested, that statute law, which can be, and usually is, more carefully drawn and considered than constitutional amendments, would answer every state purpose. Constitutions and amendments thereto, certainly when presented through the Initiative, are rigid and one-sided things. They cannot be modified in conference where\u27all sides can be heard, but must be accepted or rejected in the very form in which they are presented. Statutes, whatever their other infirmities, are not subject to these. Even permanence, which is supposed to be one characteristic of constitutions, is now in states having the Initiative rather with the statutes