The Green Bag PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT $4.00 PER ANNUM. SINGLE NUMBERS 50 CENTS. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. WRIGHTINGTON, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities, facetiae, and anecdotes.
The conservatism of the common law is a common place, and the difficulty of awaken ing the great good-natured public to the reform of abuses arising from existing legis lation, or the lack of it, is equally familiar. When economic and other problems particu larly affect the practice of the legal profession it is equally difficult to persuade lawyers as a body to consider them, and but for occa sional addresses at Bar associations, the attendance at which, unfortunately, is often not fully representative, these subjects are left to those who lack the practical concep tion which comes from constant contact with them in their concrete form. Believing that there is need of widespread professional dis cussion of the aspects of one of these modern problems which is of peculiar interest to lawyers, we have endeavored in this issue to collect information and opinions from prac tical trial lawyers based on their experience, as to the best methods of remedying the abuses of personal injury litigation which have become so notorious that it seemed not inappropriate to symbolize the subject by a picture of Hermes, the runrer and god of liars. Amid many evil practices, exist genuine injuries for which any just jurisprudence must afford compensation. To separate the wheat from the chaff requires the knowledge and experience of the practising lawyer, and on him must devolve the duty of finding methods of eradicating the abuses and, of testing the sufficiency of propositions for removing conditions of which these abuses are the outgrowth. It has been thought by many that if the cases involving employer's liability were segregated, and the evils pecu liar to that form of action remedied, the pro fession could easily evolve methods of reforming the abuses remaining in the other forms of personal injury actions. The former
problem is more complex and should properly be considered with reference to the experi ences .of other countries. For this purpose we publish a series of articles by experts, upon the English and Continental systems. The English act is of great importance, since it has been tried under social and legal con ditions approximating our own. The ac counts of the French and Belgian methods which we publish are interesting illustrations of methods of civil lawyers, but owing to constitutional and other obstacles may not be applicable here. The abuses of process seem to be a problem peculiarly American, of recent development, and one to the remedy of which but little thought has been hereto fore directed. It is to the consideration of both of these problems that it is desired to direct the reader's attention. Mr. Roger S. Warner, whose article on workman's compensation opens this issue and affords a basis for the considerations presented in the symposium which follows, is one of the younger members of the Boston Bar. In his early experience in practice he was concerned with the trial of personal injury cases on behalf of a liability insurance company and became much interested in the subject of workman's compensation which was proposed as a remedy for existing ills by a legislative commission of Massachusetts then investigating the subject. He is now a member of the firm of Warner, Warner and Stackpole of Boston. The contributors to the symposium on the abuse of personal injury litigation are all trial lawyers in active practice who are chiefly engaged in litigation of this sort. Mr. Quackenbush is counsel for the operating department of the New York Street Rail way line:?. Mr. Duane is asisstant council for the Philadelphia Traction Co. and Mr. West
