132 research outputs found
Authority of Allen v. Flood
In the case of Allen v. Flood, one of the Lords asked this interesting question, If the cook says to her master, \u27Discharge the butler or I leave you,\u27 and the master discharges the butler, does the butler have an action against the cook? This, Lord Shand said, was the simplest form in which the very question in Allen v. Flood could be raised.4 And, like the original question, it puzzled the judges and Lords very much to answer
United States Steel Bond Conversion
The litigation growing out of the plan of the United States Steel Corporation to retire $200,000,000 of its preferred stock by issuing bonds therefor has involved many interesting questions under the New Jersey law
Northwestern Railway Situation
What promises to be the most important corporate litigation that has or is likely to come before the Supreme Court for many years is involved in the various suits against the Northern Securities Company. To understand its full significance, it is desirable to recall something of the railroad history of the western states
Northwestern Railway Situation
What promises to be the most important corporate litigation that has or is likely to come before the Supreme Court for many years is involved in the various suits against the Northern Securities Company. To understand its full significance, it is desirable to recall something of the railroad history of the western states
The Northern Securities Decision
March 14 the Supreme Court of the United States decided one of the most important cases that has been before it for a number of years. The litigation referred to is the Northern Securities case. The question involved was whether the control of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway companies through the ownership of the majority of the stock of each of those companies by the Securities company violated the national anti-trust act. The majority of the Supreme Court held it did, but four of the judges dissented
Legal Education in the United States
The origin of law schools is lost in antiquity. It is probable there were advocates in Babylonia,1 and schools for the education of judges and scribes (perhaps the ancestral lawyers) in Egypt,2 more than 2000 years B.C. The Civil Code of Deuteronomy was published 621 B.C.,3 and soon afterward schools of the prophets were formed for its study.4 When Ezra left Babylon for Jerusalem (485 B.C.) he set his heart * * * to teach in Jerusalem statutes and judgments, 5 and the ruins of his school could be seen by the law students at Husal, 500 years later.6 It is probable that schools of jurisprudence and advocacy existed in Greece and Alexandria before the Christian Era.7 Schools where the Twelve Tables were publicly taught existed in Rome in the 5th century B.C.8 Gaius taught law in Troas in the 2d century A.D. Law schools existed as early in other places in the Empire.9 In 425 A.D., Theodosius founded a law school at Constantinople copied after the one then existing at Rome.10 A celebrated school existed at Beyrout in the time of Justinian (533 A. D.) who abolished all in the Empire except the three last mentioned.11 It is probable that Alcuin and Charlemagne together studied law (as they did everything else) in the Palace school at Aix,--the forerunner of the Universities of Paris, Tours, and Soissons.12 Before 1050 Lombard law was taught at Pavia. From here the lamp was handed to Bologna, where Irnerius began to teach Roman law about 1lOO A.D.,13 and where Lombard law had been taught before.14 Bulgarius (c. 1150), Azo (12OC), Accursius (1250), Bartolus (1350), Alciat and Cujas (1550) Heineccius (725), Thibaut and Savigny (1825) were all distinguished professors of law in great continental universities.15 Vacarius taught Roman law at Oxford in 1149, and was not silenced by Stephen. Thomas of Evesham continued the work. Though Henry III (1234) forbade the teaching of the leges in the London Schools, Oxford and Cambridge continued to give degrees in the Civil and Canon law.16 The English law was not taught in the Universities, and it is possible Henry\u27s order was designed to foster the new university, where lectures were read and the degrees of barrister, and serjeant conferred, in the Inns of Court, established by the lawyers between London and Westminster, after the Great Charter said common pleas should no longer follow the King\u27s court. 17 In Fortescue\u27s time (c. 1450) there were many students,18 studying original writs, and dancing, and diversions of other kinds; according to Coke the readings therein were most excellent and behooful for attaining a knowledge of the law, and Ben Jonson called them the noblest nurseries of liberty in the kingdom. It was not however till 1753 that Blackstone began to lecture on the Common Law, at Oxford, where be became Vinerian professor in 1758. The Downing professorship of English law was not established till 1800. These are justified of their works for they have given us Blackstone\u27s Commentaries and Pollock and Maitland\u27s History
Boycott - Medical Association
The opinion of McCardie, J., (without a jury), in Pratt v. British Medical Association (1919), I K. B. 244, (noted in the MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, June, 1919, p. 704), brilliantly reviewing the English cases, merits a fuller statement of the facts and principles involved than was possible in a short note. The action was by Doctors Burke, Pratt, and Holmes, against the British Medical Association and four of its officers, for damages for conspiracy, slander and libel
Need of a National Incorporation Law
When the report of the Committee on Uniformity of legislation was submitted to the last American Bar Association, and consideration of the legal problems growing out of modem commercial combinations, was urged as a matter proper for discussion and action by that association, it was gravely argued by distinguished lawyers present that there was no legal problem to be solved. The Committee on Commercial Law, however, thought otherwise and said:- The American people look to the American Bar for leadership on this question. Some one must lead. If not the lawyer, then it will be the demagogue
Purchase of Shares of Corporation by a Director from a Shareholder
It is generally laid down in the encyclopedias and text books, and affirmed in many court opinions that the doctrine that officers and directors [of corporations] are trustees of the stockholders, applies only in respect to their acts relating to the property or business of the corporation. It does not extend to their private dealings with stockholders or others, though in such dealings they take advantage of knowledge gained through their official position. 1 Much of this doctrine is based upon the language of Chief Justice SHAW in Smith v. Hurd2 decided in 1847. He said: There is no legal privity, relation, or immediate connection between the holders of shares in a bank, in their individual capacity on the one side, and the directors of the bank on the other. The directors are not the bailees, factors, agents, or trustees of such individual stock-holders. This case was an action on the case at common law, by an individual share holder against the directors for damages due to various acts of negligence and malfeasance in office through a series of years, in consequence of which the whole bank capital was wasted and lost, and the plaintiff\u27s shares, along with the others, became of no value. In sustaining a demurrer, the court gave the following reasons for the rule above: (1) The corporation is a distinct person in the law, in whom the whole stock and property are vested. (2) The individual members have no right to inter-meddle with the property, simply because they are not the legal owners of it. (3) Injury done to the capital stock by impairing its value is not in the first instance a damage to the stockholder. (4) Shares do not constitute a legal estate and property, but a qualified, equitable interest, and an injury done to the stock is not an injury to such separate interest but to the whole body of stockholders in common
State Regulations Affecting Interstate Commerce
The line between regulations of intrastate and interstate commerce is difficult to draw and hard to maintain. This is well illustrated in the recent case of St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company v. Arkansas, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States April 4, 1910, Advance Sheets, May I, 1910, p. 476, 30 Sup.Ct. 476
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