The LAWYER'S MANUAL BEING A COMPENDIUM OF POINTS OF LAW ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED, USEFUL STATUTES, AND NOTES ON COSTS, FEES, STAMPS, INCOME TAX, ESTATE, LEGACY, [1] Talbot & Fort's Index of Cases JUDICIALLY NOTICED. SECOND EDITION. BEING A LIST OF ALL CASES CITED IN JUDGEMENTS REPORTED IN AS ALSO A STATEMENT OF THE MANNER IN WHICH EACH CASE By M. R. MEHTA, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. EXTRACT FROM PREFACE. Under a system which gives prominence to judge-made law, few books can be more useful to the legal practitioner than those which guide him through the maze of myriad precedent. No better proof of the utility of Talbot and Fort's Index of Cases' can be had than the fact that it finds place on the shelves of every law library. Little apology is then needed for the issue of a new edition of what is now established as a standard work of reference. . . . Every case, I believe, judicially noticed from 1865 to 1905 has been indexed, while those of 1906 and 1907 have been inserted during the progress of the work. STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED, 119 AND 120 CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. SWEET AND MAXWELL, LIMITED, 3 CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. Now Ready, No. 348 (May), price 5s. Annual Subscription, 15s. post free. THE LAW MAGAZINE & REVIEW, A Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence; Being the combined 'Law Magazine,' founded in 1828, and the 'Law Review,' founded in 1844. CONTENTS. Criminals and Crime. By Sir ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D. The Law of the Universities. By JAMES WILLIAMS, D.C.L., LL.D. The Middle Temple Library. By C. E. A. BEDWELL, Sub-Librarian to the Hon. Society of the Middle Temple. Criminal Statistics, 1906. Salvage Awards. By A. R. KENNEDY. Local Authorities: Publication of Proceedings. By HARRY C. BICKMore. Current Notes on International Law. Notes on Recent Cases. Reviews. Contemporary Foreign Literature. [2] JORDAN & SONS, LIMITED, 116 CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, W.C. THE LAW QUARTERLY REVIEW. H No. XCV. July, 1908. NOTES. UNT v. Star Newspaper Co. [1908] 2 K. B. 309, C. A., is another example of what we must call the confusion that tends to gather round libel cases. A returning officer at a county council election was charged in two newspaper articles with wilfully preventing the agents of the party to whom he was opposed from exercising their functions in watching for any cases of personation; it was alleged that his answer to a remonstrance was, 'I am not going to take the opinion of my political opponents.' The conduct attributed to him was described as 'assertion of political bias on the part of an officer at a polling station.' He brought a libel action against the company which owned and published both newspapers. One would think that the charge made in these articles was a direct charge of abusing official position, and that if the publication was proved or admitted the only possible defence was justification; for the character of the misconduct alleged, if it really took place, was not open to dispute. If A takes B's goods out of B's possession by force, against B's will, without colour of right, and intending to convert the goods to his own use, and C thereupon says that A stole the goods, or is a thief, that is not comment, but a statement of the legal aspect of the fact; and assertion of political bias' surely does not go beyond a bare statement of what the plaintiff in this case had said-if he did say it. The defendant company, however, pleaded, in a form which is now common, that the words complained of were true so far as they stated fact, and fair comment on matter of public interest so far as they were comment. Now the Court of Appeal decided quite lately in Digby v. Financial News [1907] 1 K. B. 502, 76 L. J. K. B, 321-a case which, strangely enough, does not seem to have been mentioned in Hunt v. Star Newspaper Co.-that this defence is not a justification and raises only the question of fair comment. Comment must rest on a foundation of fact to begin with; comment on fictitious allegations cannot be fair; but the two defences are of a different kind, and the defence of fair comment has no application to distinct defamatory imputations in matter of fact: Joynt v. Cycle Trade Publishing Co. [1904] 2 K. B. 292, 73 L. J. K. B. 572. The jury ought to have been told, therefore, that, as the publication was not denied, and was obviously defamatory as a whole, and on the other hand the matter was clearly of public interest, it was for them to decide, first, whether the facts reported in the articles complained of were substantially correct-if not, verdict for the plaintiff; secondly, whether, the facts being truly reported, any further inference and comment appearing in the articles complained of, whether it was much or little, went beyond what might reasonably occur to a citizen anxious to vindicate the rule of official impartiality. What in fact they were told must be seen at large in the report; we cannot trust ourselves to extract any certain meaning from it; but it certainly might have led the jury to suppose that fair comment cannot include any inference of fact, and must not contain any personal censure, both of which suppositions would be contrary to law. The learned judge may have had Campbell v. Spottiswoode, 3 B. & S. 769, 32 L. J. Q. B. 185, in his mind. That case, now recognized as a leading authority by Fletcher Moulton L.J., notwithstanding the doubt recently thrown on its general doctrine by opinions expressed in the Court of Appeal (see L. Q. R. xxiii. 5, 97), decided only that the defence of fair comment will not cover imputations of dishonesty or bad motive made without any evidence. Accordingly the case before the Court was sent back for a new trial. As to Dakhyl v. Labouchere, a decision of the House of Lords much referred to in Hunt v. Star Newspaper Co., and now reported in a note thereto, we have great difficulty in seeing what point of law it decides, or what it contains more than elementary correction of a hasty summing up. The decision of the Court of Appeal in Nash v. Inman [1908] 2 K. B. 1, takes one step farther in the process, which has now been going on for more than a generation, of strengthening the defences of infants against their creditors. By the old common law an infant's contract was generally voidable; that is, he could avoid or ratify it as he chose at full age; but in some cases he could bind himself even during infancy, and in particular for necessaries. Liability by ratification was abolished by the Infants' Relief Act, 1874, but of that we have no more to say just now. As to necessaries, it was far from settled, down to the middle of the nineteenth century or even later, whether necessaries meant such things as the infant really wanted or such as a person of his age and condition in life might reasonably appear to want. The latter view was obviously the more convenient one to creditors, and there was some show of authority for it until the Courts remembered that the exception to an infant's general disability was not made for the creditor's benefit but for the infant's. In our own time it was settled that the question whether the defendant was adequately supplied at the time of the alleged contract was material; and the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, declared that goods in order to be necessaries must be suitable not only to the condition in life of the purchaser but 'to his actual requirements at the time of the sale and delivery.' Now the Court of Appeal has held that, whatever the common law may have been, the terms of this definition throw the burden of proof on the seller it is for him to show that the defined circumstances enabling the infant to contract existed' (per Buckley L.J. [1908] 2 K. B. at p. 13). The judgments do not point out how the seller is to satisfy himself as to the amount and quality of like goods already in the buyer's possession, still less how he is to prove such facts in a court of justice except by the help of cross-examination. Practically the result would seem to be that prudent tradesmen will deal with infants only for cash, which, for anything we know, may be desirable. An interesting and unsettled question is touched upon in Nash v. Inman, though it was not raised for decision. This is whether the Sale of Goods Act, in assimilating a minor's position to a lunatic's, and limiting his liability for necessary goods to a reasonable price, did or did not merely affirm the common law; there are cases outside the Sale of Goods Act-apprenticeship and the hiring of lodgings, for example-where the point might be material. Fletcher Moulton L.J. expressed a distinct opinion that the obligation to pay for necessaries is wholly implied by law, and the measure of damages in an action for the price of necessaries was always the value and not the agreed price. We do not know what authority definitely shows this to be very ancient law,' and we did not know that when minors ordered goods on credit they commonly were so prudent as to bargain about the price. Nevertheless there is much to be said on principle for this view; it was certainly that of Sir Mackenzie Chalmers when he drew the Sale of Goods Act, a codifying Act intended to innovate as little as possible; and it appears to be generally received without dispute in the United States. In Buckley L.J.'s judgment there is language that seems to tend the other way, but he does not deal with the point explicitly. Cozens-Hardy M.R. confines himself to the construction of the Sale of Goods Act on the point actually before |