NOTES OF RECENT CASES ing no application to a contract for the future sale of property delivered as a loan to be subsequently paid for by charging the price against credits. The statute relative to loans is held to have no application to a mere temporary loan or bailment of property for the accommodation of the bailee. This holding arose from a transaction by which a company, engaged in publishing law-books, ar ranged with an attorney to prepare a text-book, and for use in the work of preparation, furnished to the attorney a couple of sets of reports and a digest, under a contract which designated the transaction a loan and provided that the books loaned were to become the attorney's property on the completion of the work, and were to be paid for by deducting their price from the royalties to which he would then be entitled. This, it was held,.was a mere loan or bailment of the books and not a conditional sale thereof, and hence, though the contract was not recorded, the publishing com pany was entitled to the books as against the mort gagee of the attorney.
2 TAXATION. (Jurisdiction — Equitable Con version.) Penn. — The Supreme Court of Penn sylvania has determined that land located out side the state, which has, by the process of equitable conversion, been transformed into cash to satisfy the pecuniary legacies, is subject to the collateral inheritance tax. In re Vanuxem's Estate, 61 Atlantic Reporter, 876. The testator gave to his executors power to sell any of his real estate, if necessary, for the purposes of the estate, of administration, distribution or otherwise. It became necessary to sell the real estate to pay the pecuniary legacies, and land in other states was converted into personality and the proceeds brought into the courts of Pennsylvania for dis tribution to collaterals. It is held that under this state of facts, it was proper to assess the inheri tance tax against the land situated in other states, since inasmuch as the proceeds of the lands must come into the courts of Pennsylvania for distribu tion, the tax would finally fall upon the legacies themselves, rather than upon the lands appraised by the assessor in order to determine the amount of the tax. Mitchell, C. J., dissented, chiefly on the ground that the will did not work an equitable conver sion .•{;.
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TORTS. (False Imprisonment.) Me. — In Rush v. Buckley, 61 Atlantic Reporter, 774, a per son who had been arrested for violation of a muni cipal ordinance and committed to jail for failure to pay a fine for such violation sued the judge of the municipal court who issued the warrants, the officer who served them and the person who made the complaints, for false imprisonment, upon the ground that the ordinance had never gone into effect and was void because it had never been pub lished as required by law. The decisions as to the liability respectively of the person who made the original complaints and of the officer who served the warrants are founded upon fairly well-settled principles of law, and are to the effect that, where a person does no more than prefer a complaint to a magistrate in a matter over which the latter has general jurisdiction, he is not liable in trespass for false imprisonment for the acts done under the warrant issued by the magistrate, even though the magistrate has no jurisdiction over the particular complaint. Such liability only arises if the com plainant undertakes to direct or aid in the service of a bad warrant, or interposes and influences the officer to execute such warrant. The officer, of course, is held to be protected if there is no defect or want of jurisdiction apparent on the face of the writ or warrant under which he acted. As to the liability of the judge who issued the warrants and before whom the plaintiff was tried and convicted, there seems to be more question. It is, says the court, a well-established rule that judges of courts of superior jurisdiction are not liable in civil ac tions for their judicial acts, even where such acts are in excess of their jurisdiction. Whether this immunity from civil liability is equally applicable to a judge of an inferior court or to a magistratejof limited jurisdiction, is a question about which the authorities are not in entire accord. The court concludes that the tendency of recent decisions is towards the holding, that where a judge of an in ferior court or magistrate is invested by law with jurisdiction over the general subject-matter of an alleged offense, that is, has the power to hear and determine cases of the general class to which the proceeding in question belongs, and decides, al though erroneously, that he has jurisdiction over the particular offense of which complaint is made to him, or that the facts charged in the complaint constitute an offense and acts accordingly in en tire good faith, such erroneous decision is a judicial one for which he is not liable in damages.
