they can, and they are not always to be blamed for not making a terse or seemingly skilful one. Turning for an illustration of the kind of head-note I am here condemning, to a late volume of Missouri Reports, I find the case of the City of St. Louis v. Bell Tele phone Company,1 where the only question in judgment was whether the city of St. Louis had power, under its charter, to fix the maximum rate of charges of a telephone company. The court held that the city had no such power. The syllabus should, it seems, have been limited to the statement of this point; but it spreads out the reason ing and dicta of the court into no less than eleven paragraphs. It must be confessed, however, that the opposite evil is still greater. The office of the syllabus is to apprise the reader of all the points of law which are distinctly pre sented by counsel in their assignment of error and ruled upon by the court in its opinion; and an omission in the head-note of any such point, upon the mere opinion of the reporter that it may not be of suffi cient importance to present, is quite inexcu sable. Some of the reporters exhibit in their head-notes as great an astringency as the others exhibit copiousness. I am moved to make this observation at this time by having before my eyes the opinion of the Supreme Court of Arkansas in Curtis v. State.2 In this case ten distinct assignments of error are ruled upon in the opinion, only two of which are contained in the syllabus of the reporter. Again, I find in the case of Lea v. State,3 that three distinct points were ruled, only one of which is given in the syllabus. There is no excuse for such work. Wherever a point is of sufficient importance for the court to rule upon it in a written opinion, it is of sufficient importance to be noted in the syllabus, — at least it is pre sumption in the reporter to decide otherwise. 1 96 Mo. 623. 2 36 Ark. 284.
8 1 South. Rep. 244.
Nor are some reporters content with once stating what are supposed to be the ruling propositions of the case, and then resting; but they must needs restate them in other language and ring changes upon them. As an example of this kind of head-note, I select at random from a late Missouri case the following : — "In an action at law against a corporation for fraud and deceit in making false reports and resorting to fraudulent devices to sell its stock, it is necessary, in order to recover, to show that plaintiff acted upon the faith of such representations." 1 ' Certainly this is a correct proposition, and it is correct where the action is against an individual; but if the reporter had searched the case for the purpose of discovering the real point in judgment, he would not have drawn his head-note in this way, for the action was against two natural persons, and not against a corporation at all. In the same volume I find two paragraphs of the syllabus thus : — "1. [Omitting the catchwords.] Where the directors of a corporation have a right to and do fix the salary of the president and he accepts the office thereunder, he cannot, by his vote as a director, increase such salary. "2. He cannot at the same time and in the same matter act for himself and the corporation of'which he was agent and trustee, being both director and president." 2 This is drawn from the following passage in the opinion : —■ "But the directors had a right to and did fix the compensation, and he agreed to that, and the amount thus fixed, by the act of accepting the office. He could not at the same time and in the same matter act for himself and the corpo ration of which he was agent and trustee, being both a director and president. The attempted ratification thus brought about by his own vote was of no validity. It was a void act." * 1 Priest v. White, 89 Mo. 609. 2 Ward v. Davidson, 89 Mo. 445.
• Ibid, p. 454.
