The Editor's Bag
195
From this ruling the plaintiff appealed, ous, but undeserving. The lawyer would bringing the case before the Supreme Court have seen nothing funny in his stenographer's of Joke-idioture for review. The decision of handing him a legal blank. The joke, if it the Court, written by Chief Justice Tush, is had existed, would have been purely clerical. here given. The stenographer must have thought the act TUSH, C.J. It appears from examination and remark in picking up the blank to have of the record that the writing which the plain been funny, as construed in a different sense tiff wished to have inserted in the Green Bag such an act and remark would have appeared and which the editor declined to print as a imbecile, but the presence of humor cannot legal joke, was as follows:— be determined merely by elimination of all "Lawyer:—Do you want me to give you a other possible interpretations. Again, there is a radical distinction between piece of my mind? "Stenographer:—(Picking up blank deed a mental blank and a legal blank. Just be cause a lawyer's mind is a legal blank, as it from adjacent table) I have it, thank you." The plaintiff accompanied the foregoing frequently is, it by no means follows that it is with a statement in which he intimated that a blank in the common sense of the word, it was worthy of publication in the Green Bag. unless it can first be proved that he is the The question which this Court is called reverse of a brilliant leader of the bar. In a upon to consider is whether the court below good legal joke the record must show clearly erred in its decision. The evidence before all the facts material to support an allegation this Court does not warrant us in saying this, of humor, the burden of proof being on the but rather points to the conclusion that the perpetrator. When such facts do not appear foregoing joke, so called, does not deserve a in the record, but have to be proved by ex place with the humorous matter of the Green trinsic evidence, a decision that a joke is null Bag, this conclusion being based on the fact and void cannot be reversed for error. A 11 Concur. that it is not only not legal and non-humor
A PETITION FOR A NOVEL FORM OF EQUITABLE RELIEF Cassius—Will you sup with me to-night, Casca? Casca—Ay, if I live, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating. —Julius Casar. A GUEST at the recent banquet of the James Wilson Law Club of the University of Pennsylvania is good enough to give us an opportunity to reproduce this quasi-legal document in our pages :— In Equity: Pneumo- gastric Nerve v. Wm. D. Lewis
March Term, 1909 In the Court of Common Prudence Sitting in Discretion
To the Honorable Good Judgment of said Court:— Your petitioner respectfully repre sents :
1. That as a duly appointed func tionary of the defendant organism, it is your petitioner's duty to quell and sup press riots, surfeits, and congestion of traffic through and along the channels, arteries, and conduits of said bodily organization. 2. That he is informed and avers that certain malicious and evil-minded persons, acting under the name and style of the James Wilson Law Club, are conspiring and contriving to greatly vex and annoy your petitioner by intro ducing into the confines of the said defendant organism an ill-assorted and disturbing medly of stews, brews, and concoctions, as particularly set forth in an "Exhibit" hereto attached, marked "Menu." 3. That unless precautionary relief is granted by your Honorable Court,
