196
THE GREEN BAG
similar to the statute of frauds. I think it will be agreed that the statute of frauds is desirable and has lessened litigation, but when one looks through the reports and sees the quantity of cases construing the statute of frauds, he might be inclined to question this statement. In conclusion, I would say that, in my
judgment, matters will not stay as they now are. Legislation will be adopted, modi fying the present situation. The most effi cient remedy for the present evils is, in my judgment, something along the lines of the English Act above referred to. DETROIT. MICHIGAN, March, 1906.
MR. NEWCOMB. IN the development of a question so in injured claimant, even while the odor of filtrated with human elements, it is the anaesthetic is still upon him; when these indeed difficult to separate the legal and signed statements are twisted and distorted professional aspects from the social and eco by the skillful wording of the artistic ad nomic aspects. When abuses and evils ex juster, so that the ignorant and helpless ist, inquiry must be directed to their cause, sufferer who signs his name sweeps hisand the cause removed in order to effect a rights away almost as effectually as though cure, and the treatment that strikes at the it were his release; when he is bluffed and root is in the end more wholesome and bullied, and threatened with the loss of his effective. job, and every argument made and deceit For the most part the legal and profes practiced to secure the settlement of his claim sional abuses of personal injury litigation for a mere fraction of its just value; when find their origin imbedded in the social and his witnesses are sought out and bartered industrial relations of man to man. If the with in order to render dangerous testimony corporation and the individual could always harmless; when his doctors are approached find a common ground, if the weight and with offers, and promises of liberal pay value Of personal injuries could always be ment for medical services rendered, with the clearly determined and justly compromised, obvious intent to minimize the injuries; there would be no wrongs to remedy. But when every scheme is resorted to, to starve with the disagreements of men and resultant him into a settlement; when witnesses are abuse of power, come the legal and profes threatened with discharge if, on the one sional problems, out of which grow evil con hand, they refuse a statement of facts toduct and wrongdoing, that justly merit the the company, and upon the other hand, if condemnation of every lawyer and every they give one to the injured man; when layman, who has at heart a sacred regard testimony is altered or suppressed entirely, for the nobility of the law and the sincerity and witnesses mysteriously disappear; when of its professions. all these wrongdoings — and others even There is, however, too much tendency to more to be condemned — can happen and view this question from a single angle, in do happen, then it comes with poor grace fact, too much aggressive attack and eager to claim that all fairness and virtue and condemnation from one side of the trial honesty dwell in the glass palace of the cor table. When corporations train men to poration, and all the trickery and deceit in take advantage of ignorant cripples and the shack of the individual. helpless widows; when their claim agents A fair analysis of the present abuses of are sent into subsidized hospitals to secure, tort litigation strips the problem of many by the smooth trickery and polite artifice of the false notions popularly regarded as of the gold brick gentry, cheap bedside causes, when they are in fact the surfacesettlements, or signed statements of the effects of causes that lie beneath. Many of
