The Legal Important Litigation The merger said to be contemplated by the Adams, United States, American and WellsFargo express companies has been attracting the close attention of the Department of Justice. Steps are being taken so that when the merger is completed the department will be in a position to know the facts and act upon them if necessary. In the United States District Court for the northern district of New York, the Dela ware & Hudson Railroad and the Central Vermont Railway Company were fined $100 each and costs October 5, by Judge George W. Ray, for failing properly to equip certain of their cars with brakes and other safety appliances. The railroads stipulated that the judgments be taken. An example of one method of checking the law's delays was illustrated in the Appellate Court of Indiana recently, when Judge C. C. Hadley dealt vigorously with the appeal of a railroad corporation. The case was a companion one to several others previously decided, and the court ruled that the appeal was obviously dilatory, seeking to utilize technical objections for the purpose of de feating the recovery to which the plaintiff was entitled in law and equity. Judge Hadley, in affirming the judgment of the lower court, inflicted a ten per cent penalty on the corporation. The fact that the Supreme Court of Ne braska had declared the guarantee bank statute unconstitutional in that state may have given the bankers of Oklahoma an intimation of what they may expect from the Supreme Court of the United States, where the suit to test the constitutionality of the Oklahoma statute is pending. The Farmers' State Bank of Oklahoma City, at all events, has thought it well to convert itself into a national banking institution. The bank guaranty law of Oklahoma is said to have given occasion for some dissatisfac tion on the part of the Oklahoma banks. The American Book Publishers' Association, organized to prevent booksellers from cutting the prices of books, has been sued by R. H. Macy& Co., the New York department store firm, in the United States Circuit Court under the Sherman act to recover $375,000 damages on allegations that the association is a com bination in restraint of trade. The fight has been going on since 1902. After Macy & Co. undertook to sell books at their own prices the Publishers' Association sought relief in the state courts with the result that the Court of Appeals decided that on a copy righted book the interest controlling the
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copyright could dictate the retail price. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court, and the department store was sucessful in obtaining a reversal of this decision. The Supreme Court of the United States began its sittings October 11, after a recess of more than four months. Associate Justices Peckham and Moody were not in attendance. The term opened with six hundred and thirty cases on the docket, a considerably larger number than for several years past. A large number of petitions for writs of certiorari were presented the first few day or .two, seven out of twenty-four being granted and the rest denied. The first cases to be argued were those of Interstate Commerce Commission v. Chicago & Great Western R. R. Co. and Southern Pacific Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission. When the case against the American Tobacco Company under the Sherman act was called, the government asked for delay, and against the protest of the defendants the case was set for Decem ber 13. The Vermont Supreme Court, basing its decision on sees. 3716, 3717 and 3871 of the laws of Vermont, held defective the statute providing that two doctors by signing a com mitment stating that a person is insane can send the patient to an asylum. The decision was rendered October 5, on a writ of habeas corpus brought on behalf of Mrs. Lydia Anna Allen of Johnson, Vt. The Court held that all persons are entitled to be notified, and have a right to a hearing if desired, doctors' certificates being simply prima facie evidence. While the law is defective it is effective in certain directions. This question of illegal commitments had been agitating Vermont for some time. All persons will be considered legally committed at Waterbury, it is be lieved, until habeas corpus proceedings are brought and their release demanded. It is thought that very few applications will be made. Argument in the Spokane rate case was begun October 4 at Spokane, Wash., before Interstate Commerce Commissioners Prouty, Lane, Cockerell and Clark. The principal contention of counsel for Spokane was that freight rates to Seattle represented reason able compensation for carriers, and that the higher Spokane rates based on water com petition were excessive and unjust. The New York Chamber of Commerce took a hand in the case, feeling that the proposed readjustment of rates would tend to deprive the Atlantic seaports of their natural ad vantages, draw from the Atlantic seaboard the origin of manufacturing and distributing merchandise and concentrate such business in cities of the Mississippi Valley, and amount
