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The Green Bag
clerk or, for that matter, the general run of employees cannot be said to be in business or to have a place of business. It seems to me that 'place of business' means a place where a man is conducting a business of his own in which he is a principal. I am inclined to think that the statute contemplated 'place of business' as applying only to those who have a business of their own, but in this case it is only necessary to decide that a clerk, such as this bankrupt, did not have a place of business anywhere, and there fore he should have filed his petition at the place where he resided or had his domicile (In re Kinsman, Fed. Cases, No. 7832; /* re McGee, Fed. Cases, No. 8951)." (N. Y. Law Jour., Oct. 17.) Constitutional Amendment. Submission to Popular Vote — Dereliction of Administrative Officer in Performance of his Duty. Kas. Where a constitutional provision directs that any proposed amendment of the constitution which may be adopted by the legislature shall be submitted to popular vote at the next elec tion, and the state officer whose duty it is to see that the proposed amendment is so submitted fails to do his duty, held, that this dereliction of duty on the part of an administrative officer puts an end to the proposed amendment, and it may not be submitted at the following election. This was the ruling of the Supreme Court of Kansas in a recent case the title of which is not given (editorial in National Corporation Reporter, Oct. 17). The Court said: "It may well be that under some circum stances, where the constitution prescribes when an act is to be done, the failure of an official to do it at the appointed time will not relieve him from its subsequent performance. Where the effect of the act will be substantially the same if done later — when its benefits to the public will thereby be secured — the rule may be the same as though only a statute were involved. We do not regard the present case as coming within that class. The question of policy whether a particular proposal to amend the constitution should be submitted to a vote in 1904 is not necessarily the same as whether the proposal should be submitted in 1906 or in 1912." The Court also said that a subsequent legis lature would be deprived, by holding that such an amendment should by submitted at the next election, of its right to submit three amendments of its own. Copyright. Outline of Plot of an Opera Libretto not an Infringement — Holder of Copy
right does not Possess Exclusive Right to Make Abridged Versions. U. S. Judge Hazel of the federal District Court on Nov. 2 for the southern district of New York refused to hold that Henry L. Mason's "Opera Stories," in which appeared a non-dramatic ver sion of the copyrighted operas, "Germania" and "Iris," was a violation of the copyright owned by G. Ricordi & Sons. Judge Coxe had already denied an application for a temporary injunction. In his opinion Judge Hazel said that though the Copyright Act gave the complainant the broad right exclusively to translate his copy righted work or "to make any other version thereof," to sum up a libretto by outlining its plot and relating its incidents in the fewest pos sible words did not constitute such a violation of the act as Congress contemplated. "A literal definition of the words, 'make any other version thereof,' " said the judge, "would not only include the defendant's publication, but also newspaper publications after perform ance of reviews or criticisms, even when written by reporters invited by the owner of the play to witness the production. The production of abridgements or reviews of the play or opera hav ing been permitted in newspapers, it makes no difference that another without dialogue or stage directions embodies practically the same in formation in a saleable booklet." Criminal Procedure. Technical Defenses. Okla. In Steils v. State, 124 Pac. Rep. 76, defendant's counsel relied upon a technical defense to secure the reversal of a conviction. The Criminal Court of Appeals of Oklahoma said, in denying a reversal: — "The honest, hard-working, tax-burdened people of Oklahoma annually spend more money to enforce their laws than they do to educate their children. ... It is an outrage on law and justice and a crime against society for apellate courts to turn criminals loose who have been legally proven guilty, or to send their cases back to be retired, at the expense of the people, upon legal quibbles, which are without substantial justice and which are only shadows, cobwebs and fly-specks on the law. . . . "When we read some of these opinions (?) we are impressed with the thought that if the courts do not exercise more care in the future and see that they are courts of justice as well as courts of law, the people, who are the rightful source of all power, will take the matter into their own strong hands and there is no telling what the result will be. If we ever have the recall of
