The Green Bag
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As a prominent member of the American Bar Association was leaving one of the meetings at Chattanooga this summer he met one of his colleagues who asked him what was going on in the meeting. The prominent member answered that Judge Blank had been talking for over an hour. In reply to the question of the other prominent member, "On what subject?" he replied, “The judge didn't say." —Chicago Legal News. Henry E. Dixey was offered a cigar by a young lawyer. “It is easy to see," said Mr. Dixey, examin ing the cigar, “that you are not married, but only engaged." "I am engaged. But how did you know?
It's a secret," cried the lawyer. "I knew," said Mr. Dixey, “because you
have frequently offered me a cigar from your vest pocket, and it has always been broken." —Boston Globe. Eminent lawyers are frequently amazingly ignorant on all subjects other than law. A good story is told of a judge who once inter rupted a well-known patent counsel. ‘'1 am sorry to stop you, but while I understand the term ‘eccentric’ when applied to persons, I must confess that I am quite at a loss to appreciate its meaning when applied to things." The learned counsel looked a little puzzled for a moment and then, amid con
siderable merriment evoked by his reply, said: "An eccentric, my lord, is a circle whose centre is not in the centre." And a precious good rough-and-ready definition too. —La'w Notes (London).
The Legal World Important Liligalion
during the three years prior to the return of the indictment, which was in May, 1909.
The American Sugar Refinin Company has brou ht an action against the ommonwealth of Liassachusetts to have the excise tax exacted from it adjudged illegal, as a tax _on its interstate business, amounting to a. taking of its property without due process of law. The federal grand jury which had been investigating Chicago packers returned in dictments against ten high officials of the Swift, Armour and Morris concerns, Sept. 12 at Chicago. There are three indictments against each. The first charged a combination in restraint of interstate trade in fresh meats. The second charged conspiracy. The third charged monopoly of the trade in fresh meats by unlawful means. The investigation was the second started by Jud e Landis within a year. On Jan. 20, he 0 ered a grand jury n uiry which on March 20 resulted in the in 'ctment of the National Packing Co. and ten subsidiary concerns. The rosecution of Governor Haskell and other efendants in connection with alleged land frauds in Oklahoma, which has already cost the Government largee sums of money, came to a sudden end pt. 29, when the Government announced that under the re strictions laid down by the court it would be unable to make out its case. United States Judge John A. Marshall ruled that under a recent Circuit Court of Appeals decision, rendered in the Lonabaugh case, the prosecu tion would have to prove conscious participa tron by Haskell with the other defendants
He
said that the decision was in some points at variance with his own views, but he had no alternative.
S. R. Rush, special assistant to
the Attorney-General, said as the alleged con spiracy had taken place in 1902 muc of the evidence secured by the Government related to acts committed before the Statute of Limi tation as fixed by the court. The Govern ment, therefore, asked that the case be nol
prossed. Charles R. Heike, former secretary and treasurer of the American Sugar Refining Company, who had been called “the man
higher up" in the Sn ar Trust, was sentenced Sept. 19 at New Yor City by Judge Martin, in the United States Circuit Court, to serve eight months in the New York Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island and pay a fine of $5,000 on conviction of conspiring to defraud the United States Government by the under weighing of sugar. judge Martin granted a stay of execution of the sentence pending an appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. John B. Stanchfield, Heike’s coun se, gave immediate notice that an a peal
would be taken. In im osing sentence fiidge Martin said that as Hei e had only been con victed on one count of the indictment charg ing him with aiding the conspiracy, instead of all six counts, as the other defendants had
been, and taking Heike's age gsixty-six years) and his accustomed mode 0 life into con sideration, he would be inclined to suspend
sentence altogether. But as punishment must be inflicted as an example, he could not follow his personal inclination.
