CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - DISCRIMINATORY STATE GAME LEGISLATION - CONSTITUTIONALITY AS TO NON-RESIDENT LANDOWNER

A non-resident landowner and his assignee brought an action to enjoin enforcement of a Louisiana statute which denied them the right to secure licenses to trap furbearing animals or alligators on the former\u27s land until they had resided in the state for not less than one year. Held, the statute, discriminating as it did against landowners purely on the basis of non-residence, was unconstitutional as a deprivation of property and a denial of equal protection of the law. Pavel v. Patterson, (D. C. La. 1938) 24F. Supp. 915

NEGLIGENCE - CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE OF CHILDREN

In an action for damages for injuries sustained by a boy six years and seven months of age through the alleged negligence of defendant, held, the court would not rule as a matter of law that a child of this age could not be contributorily negligent; it would leave the question of plaintiff\u27s contributory negligence to the jury with instructions that a child can only be held to that degree of care which could reasonably be expected from a child of his own age, ability, and understanding under like circumstances. A vigorous dissent upheld the common-law rule that, as a matter of law, a child under seven is conclusively presumed to be incapable of contributory negligence. Tyler v. Weed, 285 Mich. 460, 280 N. W. 827 (1938)

PROHIBITION - IS THE WRIT OF PROHIBITION A PREROGATIVE WRIT?

The writ of prohibition originally issued from the king\u27s temporal courts to the ecclesiastical courts to prevent any usurpation of jurisdiction of the king\u27s courts by the spiritual courts. Prohibition has been classed as one of the prerogative writs, that is, a writ issued by the extraordinary power of the sovereign to interfere with private rights in order to preserve the prerogatives and franchises of the state. The writ of prohibition differed historically from the other prerogative writs in that its issuance was not discretionary with the court, but rather it was held to issue as a matter of right where lack of jurisdiction in the inferior court was apparent on the face of the proceedings. The purposes of prohibition as presented by the early cases,--viz., to maintain the king\u27s rights and to secure an orderly administration of justice according to the rules established by the king, --emphasize the prerogative nature of the writ. It was considered to be to the king\u27s interest to prevent jurisdictional usurpations from becoming precedents for a constant exercise of superior jurisdiction by inferior courts, with resultant strengthening of power and income of the spiritual courts at the expense of the temporal courts

DEEDS - FUTURE INTERESTS - RIGHT OF MURDERER TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY BY OPERATION OF CONDITION SUBSEQUENT THAT PROPERTY SHALL REVERT ON GRANTEE\u27S DEATH

Grantor, who had been adjudged insane, conveyed a farm to grantee on condition that the farm would revert to grantor should grantee predecease him. Grantee was killed under circumstances tending to show that he was killed by grantor, who was insane at the time of the death of the grantee. Held, title to the land, under the deed, reverted to grantor upon grantee\u27s death, in spite of the general rule in Missouri that a murderer cannot inherit realty from his victim. Eisenhardt v. Siegel, (Mo. 1938) 119 S. W. (2d) 810

BANKRUPTCY-CORPORATE REORGANIZATION - FRATERNAL BENEFIT SOCIETY ENTITLED TO BENEFITS OF SECTION 77B

Plaintiff\u27s right to petition for reorganization under section 77 B of the Bankruptcy Act was challenged on the ground that plaintiff was an insurance corporation within the meaning of section 4 of the Bankruptcy Act and therefore excepted from the benefits of the act. Held, that when Congress used the words insurance corporation in the Bankruptcy Act, it meant a corporation authorized by the law of its creation to do an insurance business. As Congress knew that the various States had authorized the formation of fraternal benefit societies, described as such in enabling statutes, when Congress passed this statute without defining the characteristics of insurance corporations, it recognized the various definitions thereof in the statutes of the several states as to what constitutes an insurance corporation. Under the Florida law, petitioner was not an insurance corporation, but a fraternal benefit society, and therefore not excluded from benefits of the act. Grand Lodge, Knights of Pythias of North America v. McKee, (C. C. A. 5th, 1938) 95 F. (2d) 474

BANKRUPTCY -TRUSTEE\u27S LIABILITY - EFFECT OF REQUIREMENT OF DEPOSIT IN DESIGNATED DEPOSITARY ON TRUSTEE\u27S COMMON LAW DUTY OF DUE CARE

In a suit to charge a trustee in bankruptcy for the loss of funds of the bankrupt estate caused by insolvency of the depositary bank, the trustee contended that as he had fulfilled the requirement of section 61 of the Bankruptcy Act by depositing the funds of the estate in a designated depositary, he could not be charged with liability for any loss occurring thereafter; he argued that section 61 repealed, by implication, the trustee\u27s common-law duty of due care in the handling of estate funds after they were deposited in a designated depositary. Held, the fact that the freedom of choice of the fiduciary is limited by statute does not relieve him of the duty of exercising due care within the field left to his discretion, and he is liable if his negligence caused the loss. United States ex rel. Willoughby v. Howard, 302 U. S. 445, 58 S. Ct. 309 (1937)

The Effects of Inter-particle Attractions on Colloidal Sedimentation

We use a mesoscopic simulation technique to study the effect of short-ranged inter-particle attraction on the steady-state sedimentation of colloidal suspensions. Attractions increase the average sedimentation velocity $v_s$ compared to the pure hard-sphere case, and for strong enough attractions, a non-monotonic dependence on the packing fraction $\phi$ with a maximum velocity at intermediate $\phi$ is observed. Attractions also strongly enhance hydrodynamic velocity fluctuations, which show a pronounced maximum size as a function of $\phi$. These results are linked to a complex interplay between hydrodynamics and the formation and break-up of transient many-particle clusters.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure

The Influence of Mastication on Soils and Fuels in Moist and Dry Forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains

We evaluated the applicability of mastication as a fuel treatment alternative within Northern Rocky Mountain moist and dry forests to treat post-harvest activity slash (moist forest) and standing trees (dry forest). On the moist forest site, we compared four different slash treatments, mastication, machine grapple piling, lop and scatter, and a control within a wildland urban interface setting to determine the effects of these treatments on soil nutrition, forest floor depth, and woody debris distributions. We randomly assigned the slash treatments and controls to 12 one-acre plots. Nitrogen, soil carbon, and magnesium concentrations within the soil components were not significantly different among the slash treatments. Lopped and scattered sites had significantly here duff depths than duff depths within the other slash treatments and control. Two years after treatment the structure and character of the masticated fuels was such that these areas resembled the grapple piled sites. We established the dry forest site to treat excess standing non-commercial 80-year old ponderosa pine. We masticated 20 acres in the fall; six one-acre plots were randomly located within the masticated area. We applied prescribed fire the following spring to three of the plots the remaining three plots were post-masticated controls. During the prescribed fire, flame lengths were low (\u3c 0.5 m), although combustion continued to occur from smoldering. The radiation and convection was of sufficient intensity that crown scorching raised canopy base heights by 3 to 5 m. A critical element of the prescription was that lower duff moistures had to be greater than 100 percent during burning, therefore, there was little to no consumption of the forest floor even with the smoldering fire. Based on these results, we recommend that when burning masticated material particular attention to lower duff moisture is critical to minimize the down ward heat pulse

Ewe and Lamb Club

June 1926. (Reprinted November, 1928).Cover title