NOTES OF RECENT CASES common law liability of a husband to support his wife while she is an inmate of an insane asylum, is the recent one of Richardson v. Stuesser, 103 Northwestern Reporter, 261. After laying down the preliminary propositions that the common law liability of the husband to support his wife does not extend to supporting her outside the matri monial home reasonably chosen by him, unless he refuses to do so there or she resides away there from by his consent, and that such common law liability cannot be extended by implication from the written law as to the support of other persons but can only be extended by a statute plainly so intended, it is held that where a wife, as a charity to her and protection to others, is, by due process of law, taken from the matrimonial home and confined in an asylum for the insane, and the husband submits, or even takes the initiatory proceedings to secure for her the benefit of the public charity, there is no element of refusal by him to support her at the matrimonial home, or consent by him to her absence therefrom within the common law rule rendering him liable under such circumstances for her support outside the home. The majority of the cases touching on the same or analogous points are cited in the opinion, among them being the following: County of Dela ware v. McDonald, 46 Iowa, 170; Board of Com missioners of Noble County v. Schmoke, 51 Ind. 416; Board of Commissioners of Switzerland County v. Hildebrand, i Ind. 555; Board of Com missioners of Marshall County v. Burkey, Adm'r, i Ind. App. 565, 27 N. E. 1108; Davis v. St. Vincent's Inst. for Insane, 61 Fed. 277, 9 C. C. A. 501; Watt v. Smith, 89 Cal. 602, 26 Pac. 1071; Wray v. Wray, 33 Ala. 187; Board of Supervisors 11. Budlong, 51 Barb. 493; Goodale r. Lawrence, 88 N.Y. 513, 42 Am. Rep. 259, overruling Goodale v. Brockner, 25 Hun, 621; City of Banger v. Inhabitants of Wiscasset, 71 Me. 535; Senft v. Carpenter, 18 R.I. 545, 28 Atl. 963; Howard v. Whetstone Township, 10 Ohio, 365; Trustees of Springfield Township v. Demott, 13 Ohio, 104; Baldwin v. Douglas County, 37 Neb. 283, 55 N.W. ^75, 20 L. R. A. 850. INSURANCE. (EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY — RIGHTS OP EMPLOYEE) TENNESSEE SUPREME COURT. The rights of the insured in an employers' liability policy in the various forms in which such policies are usually written, is considered in Finley v. United States Casualty Co., 83 Southwestern Reporter, 2. It is there held that the amount of such a policy, if issued directly against liability, becomes an asset of the insured immediately upon the happening of the event upon which liability
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depends, and upon the giving of such notice as the policy provides for, and that it may then be assigned by the assured or taken for his debt. But where the policy insures against damage by reason of liability, the amount of the insurance does not become available until assured has discharged the liability, and not even then available unless proper notice has been given as provided in the policy. In this case the insured employer compromised a claim against the company pending an action by an injured employee for damages, and the employee, after obtaining judgment against the employer, sought to recover from the insurance company on the ground that the policy inured to his benefit. In either form of policy it is held that this con tention is unsound, and that neither under a policy insuring directly against liability nor under one insuring against loss or damage by reason of liability, is the employee in privity with the parties to the contract. INTOXICATING LIQUORS. (REGULATION OP SALE — SEATS IN SALOONS) ARKANSAS SUPREME COURT. A statute conferring power on cities to license, regulate, tax, or suppress drinking houses and dram-shops, is held in Pate v. City of Jonesboro, to justify the enactment of an ordinance forbid ding the keeping of chairs or anything for per sons, except the bar-tender or proprietor, to sit on in saloons. The work of Judge Dillon on Municipal Corporations, Commonwealth v. Casey, 134 Mass. 194, and Robinson v. Hang, 71 Mich. 38, 38 N. W. 668, in which practically similar regulations find support and approval are cited as authority for the holding. LIBEL. (PUBLISHING WHITE MAN AS NEGRO —• EFFECT OF THIRTEENTH, FOURTEENTH, AND FIFTEENTH AMENDMENTS) SOUTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT. It has long been held in South Carolina that to call a white man a negro is actionable per se. Wood v. King, i Nott & McCord, 184; State v. Farley, 4 McCord, 317. It is said in Flood v. News & Courier Co., 50 Southeastern Reporter, 637, that neither the Thirteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, abolishing slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment, providing that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens, and that no state shall abridge their privileges or deny the equal protection of the law, nor the Fifteenth Amendment, providing that the rights of citizens shall not be abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, have destroyed
