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The Green Bag
"In our judgment, it was never in tended to confer on the Commission any such unrestrained and undirected power." Mack, J., dissented. Wills. Statutory Requirement of Sub' scription at End — End Determined with Reference to Consecutive Order of Com position. N. Y. The New York Court of Appeals has substantially, though not so clearly as was to be desired, overruled the artificial doctrine of the Andrews Will case (Matter of Andrews, 162 N. Y. 1) in a decision recently rendered. In that case a will had been written on the first, second and third pages of a printed form, being unusual in only one respect, namely, in that the second and third pages of the instrument, instead of being left and right, were right and left, the signature and attestation clause coming at the top of the left hand page. Though the draftsman had clearly numbered the pages so that there could be no con fusion regarding their order, the Court of Appeals (Bartlett, J.) said that the portion marked "2d page," following the "3d page," containing signatures of testatrix and witnesses, was not incor porated into the will proper nor con nected with it in any way. Vann, J., in Matter of Field, decided February 20 ( N. Y. Law Jour., Feb. 29), said he regarded "the decision in the Andrews case as extreme and as marking a boundary beyond which we should not go." Where the testator, using a short-form printed blank, had referred to "the pages hereto attached and numbered from one to six, inclusive," and these sheets were pinned to the blank space over the witness clause and signatures, it was held that the will, "when read consecutively as the mass of mankind would read it, has the signature at the
physical and natural end thereof," and was therefore subscribed at the end in compliance with the statute. Wills. Winding-up of Testator's Busi ness by Trustees — Moral Interest of Male Heirs must Yield to Considerations ofSound Trust Management. Mass. A testator, largely interested in woolen manufacturing, created from his large estate a trust, terminating in 1919, authorizing the trustees to continue his business of manufacturing only for the purpose of winding up the company, and only so long as they might find it advis able in order to close it up without serious loss. The trustees, believing the time had come when the interests of the estate made a sale of the properties advisable, petitioned the court for authority to dispose of them. The widow of the testator opposed the sale on the ground that her two minor sons needed the incentive of looking forward to active participation in a business which their forbears had carried on for more than a century, since the time of Samuel Slater, the father of textile manufacture in the United States. In the Slater Will case, determined by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, March 1, the objections of the widow were overruled, and the trustees were authorized to sell the properties. Chief Justice Rugg said that the mill properties "constituted the investment of too large a proportion of the trust fund to be consistent with sound trust management. . . . These considerations overbalance the gain which might ensue from retaining the properties in the hope that the two minor sons of the testator might grow to maturity with tastes and capacities which would enable them to assume responsible positions in the manufacturing business." Morton and Braley, JJ., strongly dissented.
