The Legal World lmporlan! Legislation At the request of the United States Gov ernment, the date for the hearing at The Hague of the case in regard to the rights of United States fishermen, in Newfoundland waters, has been postponed until next June. The whole dis te hinges on the important question whet er the three-mile territorial limit shall be measured out from a straight line connectin the various headlands, or whether it sh coast.
follow the sinuosities of the
raking articles which have been and are now appearing in man opular magazines. Not long since, one o t e corporation magnates who had been thus maligned secured a ver dict for $15,000 damages in a suit brought against McClure’: Magazine (see 21 Green Bag 590), and there are other libel actions
of like character pending against other maga zines. Thus the Cosmopolitan, which has been giving many pages to the affairs of the sugar trust, has been sued by Thomas B. Harned, who asks $75,000 damages for the alleged inj due to the ublication of an article on ‘E'Tragedies of t e Sugar Trust,"
Attorney-General Wickersham and his special assistant, J. C. McRe olds, presented to the Sn reme Court of t e United States Dec. 30 t e brief of the government in the famous cases against the American Tobacco Company. After showing that in 1890 com petition was free, the various coalitions are
traced, resulting in a situation wherein, it is alleged, the very existence of certain defend ants is criminal, and "certainly they cannot rightfully com lain because restrained from carrying out t e unlawful oses of their creation; they are wilfully in positions where every act is a transgression." Puttin aside, for the time being, the effect of the S erman anti-trust law, under which the suit was brought, it is contended that the combination was illegal when it was entered into in 1890,
because contrary to the common law. Among the assi ents of error set out in the a peal of the Standard Oil Company of New erse, filed in the United States Circuit Court at
t. Louis Dec. 17, are the following:
that there was error in the decision that many of the nineteen corporations, a majority of the stock of which was in l899 owned by the stockholders of the Standard Company of New Jersey, were naturally com titive; in findin that the Standard Oil mpany of New ersey has since 1899 prevented com ti tion; in findin that if the necessary e ect of a contract is to restrict free competition it is a violation of the Sherman act; in find
ing that the exchange of stock of competitive corporations, the effect of which is to restrict competition, constitutes a combination in restraint of commerce; in finding that the
so-called subsidia companies were mana ed as the business 0 a single person, the get being that each company was separately man a ed b its ofiicers and directors; in finding t at t e Standard Oil Com any of New Jersey has acquired a comman 'ng volume of trade by means of a trust. That certain editors believe that there is a strong popular hatred of great combinations of capital is shown by the numerous muck
in which it is said, referring to himself: "He sold out his client to the trust." And Judge Ben. B. Lindse of the Denver Juvenile Court and Harvey 0' iggins have both been sued by W. G. Smith, former speaker of the Colorado
house of representatives, for the goint series of articles bein published in 'uerybody's Magazine. Mr. mith asks for $50,000_dam ages from each, and that the publication of
the articles entitled “The Beast and the Jungle" be discontinued.
Imporianf Litigation The legislative board of the American Auto mobile Association, which first advocated the
policy of uniformity in automobile laws, 18 about to bring the matter more rominently before the country b a nation le 'slatwe convention, which wi be held in W ington, D. 0., Feb. 15, 16 and 17. Hon. Curtis Guild, ]r., former Governor of Massachusetts, favored federal laws covering divorce and corporations before the New England Society of Cincinnati Dec. 23. “Abra ham Lincoln," he said, "was obliged to violate the Constitution of the United States in order to wipe out the crime of human slavery. The nationalization of law thus inaugurated has not yet been fully carried out. We have national laws regulating the distilling of in toxicants, regulating all banks of issue, regu lating the operation of the so-called trusts, and regulating the settlement of bankrupts; and we have national law, insufficient and too feebly enforced, that is supposed to secure pure food. Why should not the development of community of law be carried further in all matters of national moment? Why should we shrink from livin in Ge under one common national law. It is indecent that the safeguarding of common morality in all the states can today be broken down by a state law in any state." The first bill to brin about reforms of procedure introduced in t e present session of
