The Legal World A somewhat sensational interest in the meeting of the association had been aroused by the action of its secretary in norsending Fletcher an expressing indiscreet letter disapproval to Gover of his selection of Associate Justice Powers as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, ignoring "the twenty-four years' faithful service of Judge Munson." The secre tary explained his action in writing this letter and offered the association a straightforward apology, which was accepted. Miscellaneous Several new rules of general practice adopted by the Justices of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court last June went into effect in New York Nov. 1. The most important change is that made by amendment of Rule 34, requiring that a case and exceptions on appeal, as dis tinguished from a bill of exceptions, shall contain all the evidence by question and answer, the rulings of the court and the exceptions of all parties taken upon the trial, "but shall not contain the opening and summing up or the remarks of counsel unless ordered by the judge or referee The Appellate Division, on rendering final judgment on appeal, pursuant to the provisions of section 1317 of the Code . . . without granting a new trial, may reverse any finding, and shall make such new findings of facts proved upon the trial as shall be necessary to sustain the judgment awarded by the Appellate Division. The facts as found by the Appellate Division shall be inserted in its order for judgment, and the facts as found by the Special Term or referee before whom the case was tried, which are reversed by the Appellate Division, shall like wise be specified in such order." On this substitution of question and answer form for narrative form in cases on
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appeal, which follows the recommenda tions of several of the bar associations, the New York Law Journal comments as follows (editorial, Oct. 10) : "Such general change of form as to cases on appeal is highly desirable, if not actually indispensable, for justice where the Appellate Division is to deal with the facts and render final judgment. It sometimes happens, through clever unscrupulousness of one preparing a case on appeal and dullness of apprehension or inadvertence on the part of his opponent, that a record thrown into narrative form conveys an incomplete or even erroneous idea of the substance of the testimony." Remarkable proceedings have occurred in the court of Superior Judge John E. Humphries of Seattle, leading to a severe arraignment of him by the president of the Illinois Lawyers' Association on Oct. 4, and the adoption by that body of a denunciatory resolution. Judge Humphries sent thirty-one men and six women to jail for contempt in signing a protest against his injunction forbidding street speaking at certain places by Socialist orators. On the eve of the arrival of Governor Lister, who was on his way to Seattle with a view to securing the release of the prisoners, Judge Humphries hastened to release them and afterward he asserted, after a conference with the Governor and the other Superior Court judges, that he would not resign —"they couldn't pull me off the bench with a hook." Glenn Hoover, attorney for the Free Speech Defense League and former assistant Attorney-General of the state, was among those imprisoned, and he had also been fined and "forever disbarred" by Judge Humphries. Thorwald Siegfried, counsel for Hoover and others, who had previously asked the prosecutor of the Seattle Bar Association
