Latest Important Cases Survivorship. "The Titanic Disaster as Raising Questions of Survivorship." By Alexander H. Robbins. 74 Central Law Journal 416 (June 7). "Almost all of the common law rules relating to the administration of estates, marriage and divorce, husband and wife, parent and child and many other jjreat divisions of the law have been supplanted in favor of the civil law rules by chancery and statutory innovations. If this be true in all these great particulars, why may it not be true with respect to the common law rules governing the question of survivor ship in a common disaster?" See Maritime Law.
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Trade Unions. "The Status of Trade Unions in England." By W. M. Geldart. 25 Harvard Law Review 579 (May). The legal entity of the trade union is also dis cussed in Mr. Singleton's article on the reality and fiction theories of the corporation in the Journal of Comparative Legislation. (See Cor porations, supra.) Trustees. "Money Stolen by a Trustee from One Trust and Used for Another." By R. D. Weston. 25 Harvard Law Review 602 (May).
Latest Important Cases Employers' Liability. Modification of Con tributory Negligence Rule. U. S. The United States Supreme Court, in Mis souri Pacific Ry. Co. v. Castle, decided May 13, (Oct. term, 1911, no. 344) held that the police power of the state justifies a statutory modifi cation of the doctrine of contributory negligence by providing that such negligence on the part of an injured employee shall not be a bar to a recovery against the employer, where the em ployee's negligence was slight, and that of the employer gross in comparison, but that damages shall be diminished in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the injured em ployee. Mr. Chief Justice White, in giving the opinion of the court, said: "Obviously the same reasons which justified a departure from the commonlaw rule in respect to the negligence of a fellow servant also justify a similar departure in regard to the effect of contributory negligence." In this respect the authority of the Mondou case was recognized as binding. Employers' Liability. When Employee it Member of a Relief Society — Private Contracts cannot Exempt Employer from Liability under the Federal Act. U. S. In deciding a case that came to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, Mr. Justice Hughes held, May 13, that the federal employers' liability act did not exempt the employer from civil liability for the injury of an employee who agreed to accept the relief offered by an employees' benefit
association. Phila., Bait. & Wash. R. Co. v. Schubert, Oct. term, 1911, no. 549. The suit was brought by a brakeman for damages on account of personal injuries sus tained in the line of his employment. Judgment for $7500 was awarded him. The railway com pany defended on the ground that Schubert was a member of a relief society organized among the employees of the road and that he had signed certain regulations, among them one agreeing to exempt the company from any liability on account of injuries sustained in the line of his employment. The court, relying upon a recent decision of last term in the case of C. B. & Q. Railroad v. McGuire, which involved the constitutionality of an amendment to the employers' liability law of Iowa, which enacted that an employee could not enter into a contract through a relief society that would exempt the employer from liability, took the view that the same rule applies to the federal act. (23G.B. 320.) The court put aside the contention of the railroad that, because Schubert had signed the regulations of the relief fund before the em ployer's liability act was passed, such agree ment of membership amounted to a contract in existence at the time the law was enacted which could not be impaired by the statute. The court declared the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce could not be interfered with by existing private contracts. Monopolies. Terminal Facilities — Combi nation Excluding Some of the Railroads Com pelled to Use Them — Sherman Act. U. S,
