NEW LAW BOOKS.
It is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book rcvieii's written by competent reviewers. The usual custom of magazines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of subscribers, however, The Green Bag will be glad to review or notice any recently published law book whether received for rcvieiv or not. COMMENTARIES ON THE LAW OF MASTER AND SERVANT. By С. В. Labatt. In three vol umes. Volumes I. and II. Rochester Lawyers' Co-operative Publishing Com pany. 1904. (lii-j-2639 pp¡) Here are two volumes of vast size; and the series is to be completed with a third. So huge a work comes in such a questionable shape that the practitioner opens it with sus picion. The members of the profession have paid large sums for knowledge of the ways of publishers and of authors. Do thick volumes mean large type and heavy paper? Sometimes; but not on this occa sion. Do they mean grand larceny from previous text-writers? Such improper re spect for the works of predecessors has been shown by some persons; but not by Mr. Labatt. Do they mean long quotations from judicial opinions—a sort of undigested expansion? Such extracts have been made by more than one author, and have been advertised as virtues upon the specious, but false, ground that thus the reader gets the very doctrine of the courts; but in these volumes one finds neither laziness nor dis honesty, and the text is the author's own deduction from the actual decisions, as dis tinguished from the words of the judges. The text is, indeed, not very long, and the size of the volumes is due chiefly to the elaborate foot-notes. The foot-notes pre sent an apparatus wherewith the reader can test and supplement the text. The foot notes attempt to cite all the pertinent cases; and they go far beyond mere citation. They frequently contain, by way of quotation, the pith of the opinion; but, quite as frequently, they give the author's own condensation of
553
the facts, pleadings, opinion, and result. The foot-notes are so well done that they may well serve as the brief-maker's best guide to cases actually in point. The two volumes now ready deal exclu sively with the employers liability to his servant. The first volume has. for its special topics the duties of the master and the as sumption of risk by the servant; and its chief peculiarity lies in the author's return to the widely discarded belief that contributory negligence and volenti non fit injuria are es sentially identical in principle. The second volume has for its special topics the fellowservant rule, the vice-principal doctrine, and employers' liability acts; and its chief pecu liarity is an attempt to retain under the head of vice-principalship—though with a careful explanation of all distinctions—the cases which discard any test of relative dig nity of servants and which lay stress exclu sively upon the fact that the negligence of the so-called vice-principal relates to such personal duties of the master as are incap able of delegation. The author believes that the doctrine of assumption of risk and the fellow servant, rule have caused great injustice; but the plainness of his speech upon these points does not in the least diminish the worth of his book as an accurate presentation of exist ing law. A natural fear is that the one volume which is to come cannot cover the remaining ground with the same minuteness. Yet it seems probable that the author does not in tend to cover the whole subject of Master and Servant, but intends to omit the parts wherein the law of Master and Servant is merely an application of the doctrines of the more general subject of Agency. At any rate, there is not at present an indication that this series will treat of the duties, whether contractual or tortious, of the mas ter or of the servant to a third person. In deed, the two volumes now ready are ex clusively devoted to the master's duty to the servant, and the third volume seems likely not to go beyond this class of topics, as it is
