London Legal Letter.
197
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. TWO cases, of a widely different nature, have recently attracted the attention of the lay public to the courts. In one of them certain phases of the ecclesiastical law of the kingdom for the past five hundred years have been carefully reviewed, and in such a manner as to excite comment upon the eru dition which many of the judges and counsel, and those, particularly, who are supposed to be engrossed with modern commercial dis putes, are able to exhibit. Interest was added to the litigation by the fact that it was started by an extreme faction of the Church of England, those who advocate the evangelical or " low-church " practice. Can on Gore, who it was claimed was a ritualist, had been appointed Bishop of Worcester, and, in usual course, the appointment was referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury for confirmation. The Vicar General, acting for the Archbishop, refused to hear ob jections, and the objectors obtained a rule nisi for a mandamus to compel him to do so. The case was argued at great length, and antique Roman Latin in musty volumes was quoted for hours. Within three days after the arguments were concluded the Lord Chief Justice delivered a judgment which filled four solid columns of The Times, and the two other judges sitting with him added two other columns. The opinions were mar vels of learning, but what would have most surprised an American lawyer was the promptness with which they were handed down, particularly considering the recondite nature of the questions the judges were called upon to decide, and the quantity of almost obsolete authorities that must be ex amined. The decisions were adverse to the contention of the objectors to the confirma tion.
March, 1902. The other case was one in which several men were put upon their trial, one for forg ing bank checks, and the others for con spiring with him in the fraud. One Goudie, a clerk in a Liverpool bank, had succeeded in getting no less than close to $600,000 out of the bank on forged checks. He drew the checks in the name of a wealthy depositor in the bank, sent them to his co-conspirators in London, and then when the checks came, instead of charging them up to the account of the nominal drawer, destroyed them. He was able to do this through being the ledger clerk, having in charge the books in which the checks of the particular depositor would, in the ordinary course of business, have been debited against him. One of the features of the trial was the clever way in which the judge assisted in forcing a restitution of the proceeds of the forgeries, which, having passed into the hands of third parties, or having been secreted, could not otherwise have been recovered. The trial was concluded on Thursday, when the judge announced that he could not sentence the prisoners until the following Saturday, and that his sentences would be influenced by their efforts and those of their friends in bringing the money into court. This course was eminently successful, and led to the restoration of nearly sixty per cent of the plunder. A bill has been introduced into Parliament during the past fortnight which will probably be passed without much opposition, and which will materially modify patent practice in this country. It is the outcome of the report of a committee which rendered its report last March, after having taken a large amount of evidence of well-known experts.
