Rditorial Department. AN interesting example, says the Youth's Companion, of dramatic appeal to human ex perience during a trial and a conclusive test of the appeal closed a case that had been be fore a Western court for a number of years. As the case is reported in the Kansas City Journal, the plaintiff was suing- a railway for damage to a building alleged to have been set on fire by a spark from a locomotive. The counsel for the railroad based his de fense on the ground that, since the fire was seen by employes on the train, and the train was in the station only four minutes, the fire must have been set before the engine pulled into the station. Four minutes, he main tained, were not long enough for a fire to start and get under way. The lawyer for the plaintiff made this ar gument: "If a fellow is sitting on a sofa holding a girl's hand, the time travels like an express-train. But if you dump a lot of sparks on the pine roof of a dry building in the summer time, four minutes is ample to settle the fate of the structure, in spite of all efforts to save it." There were some incredulous smiles. The attorney took out his watch, and handing it to the foreman of the jury, requested him to announce when four minutes were up. The jurymen leaned over and looked at the watch. Then they got tired and settled back in their seats. The foreman of the jury low ered his hand as the signal for the beginning of the four minutes, and rested it on his knee. The attorney shifted his feet a few times and sat down. The judge looked at the clock, then out of the window. A deputy marshal put his head in at the door to see what was the matter, and waited the result of the curious scene. Nearly every man in the room had his watch out and was studying the face of it. The speaker was sacrificing four minutes of his time, but he knew they were well invested. At last the foreman of the jury announced that the four minutes had expired, and handed the watch back to the lawyer. To every man in the room the time had seemed twice as long. After the case the judge said it seemed like fifteen minutes. The weari
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some suspense had the effect on the jury that the lawyer had intended. It was an imme diate object-lesson, a striking exposition, of how much might happen in four minutes. The jury found that the defendant's engine had ample time to fire the building and the fire had enough time to get under way and make a blaze that the men on the train could see, and they brought in a verdict for the plaintiff of something over fourteen thousand dollars, the full value of the building. A CASE came lately before the Second Di vision of the Court of Session [Scotland] in volving the question of the right of pri vacy" which has been the subject of so much discussion in the United States since the de cision in Roberson r. Rochester (171 N. Y. 538.) A father employed a photographer to photograph his two daughters, and ordered and paid for eighteen copies of each photo graph. The photographer's successors in business, of their own accord, made enlarge ments of the photographs and exhibited them in their studio for the purposes of their trade. To this the father objected, and, on . the photographers refusing to desist from exhibiting the photographs, brought an ac tion of interdict. In this action the ag grieved father has proved successful, the court (Lord Young dissenting) having held that a photographer who has been employed by a customer to take a portrait has no right to print copies of it for sale or exhibition without the customer's consent. The nature of a photographer's rights in the negatives of photographs taken by him in the ordinary course of business was discussed by the judges, the view of the majority being that neither photographer nor customer has the absolute right of property in a negative. The photographer is entitled to the custodv of the negative in order to secure to himself the privilege of supplying possible future or ders, while the customer has an interest in it to the extent of entitling him to prevent the photographer using it except on his or der and with his consent: (M'Cosh v. Crow & Co., i/th March, 1903.)—The Law Times.
