London Legal Letter.
89
signing, the payee arranged the papers for negotiable paper, when in fact he believed the maker to sign. The maker looked at he was completing an entirely different con them to see whether they were the agree tract? Could a man of ordinary care and ments he had read; but by some sleight of ( precaution have guarded himself and the hand or confusion of papers a note was public against such an imposition? Was signed. It passed into the hands of an he any more responsible for the negotiable innocent holder. The court left the question paper than upon a forged note? The jury of the maker's negligence to the jury. Had answered, Certainly not. The last case was a more skilful trick he examined what he signed? Was he negligent in the signing of the papers, so than either of the above. The note signed that by some trick he was made to utter was as follows : — NORTH EAST, April 3. 1877.
Six months after date I promise to "pay J- B. Smith, or bearer Fifty Dollars when I sell by order Two Hundred and fifty Dollars
- worth of Hay and Harvest Grinders
for value received with legal interest without appeal and also without defalcation or stay of execution. T. H. BROWN I Agent for Hay and Harvest Grinders.
The dotted line was not in the original; the paper was separated at this point. The court held it was a case for the jury, saying it was so cunningly framed that it might be cut in two parts, one of which, with the maker's name, would then be a perfect nego tiable note. If there was no negligence in the maker, the good faith and absence of negligence on the part of the holder can not avail him. The alteration was a forgery, and there was nothing to estop the maker from alleging and proving it. The ink of a writing may be extracted by a chemical process so that it is impossible for any one but an expert to detect it; but surely in
such a case it cannot be pretended that the holder can rely upon his good faith and diligence. The drunken maker, he who wrote his note, One Hundred Dollars, the one signing a promissory note with condition on margin that could be removed, had not done everything prudent and careful men could do, to guard the public and them selves. In the three latter cases everything in the power of the makers as prudent and careful men had been done; they had not been negligent in the least degree. At any rate, so the jury found; and their findings were approved by courts.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. LONDON, Jan. n, 1893.
T*HE courts re-opened to-day after the Christ•*• mas recess. Heavy cause-lists await dispo sal. — there are as many as nine hundred actions down for trial in the Queen's Bench division alone; and as usual the Divorce Court record's promise some curious revelations. The will of the late Duke of Sutherland is to be disputed in the Pro bate Court; and if a tithe of the rumors one hears is true, the Sutherland Will case should be the 12
most celebrated cause of the season. The House of Lords will occupy its legal moments with hear ing twenty appeals, of which twelve come from the English Court of Appeal, five from the Scot tish Court of Sessions, and three from Ireland. The whole country is awaiting with the utmost expectancy Mr. Gladstone's new Home Rule Bill. Parliament re-assembles in the beginning of Feb ruary, and the measure will in all likelihood be in troduced at once. The general impression is that
