NOTES OF RECENT CASES vessels other than those belonging to persons outside of the combination. Plaintiffs engaged in the South African trade, and for some time used plaintiffs' vessels exclusively and received the regular rebates. Trouble eventually arose owing to the claim that plaintiffs were shipping to persons who were receiving freight over competing lines, and further rebates were refused. The present action was brought for recovery of treble damages under section 7 of the Sherman Act. it being specially alleged that complainants had suffered injury in the sum of £ 1112 for loss of rebates, and that defendants had formed an unlawful combination and monopoly in restraint of foreign commerce. The court held that the combination would not be invalid at common law, and that the Federal Anti-trust Law did not apply to it, and dismissed the complaint, though intimating that plaintiffs might have a good cause of action upon the contract or for deceit to recover the rebates which they claimed to be due them. MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. (Contracts.) Ark. — The subject of the legality of contracts in which a city officer is interested is involved in People's .Savings Bank V: Big Rock Stone and Construction Co., 99 S. W. Rep. 836. A bank, of which the mayor of a city was a stockholder and president, took an assignment of the claim of a contractor against the city for the price of work which he had performed for the city. The work was to be inspected and accepted for the city by a board of which the mayor was chairman. It appeared that the bank, acting through its president and officers, in good faith, advanced the contractor certain sums of money to enable him to carry out his contract with the city, and to secure the loan, took from him an assignment of his claim against the city. At the time this was done the work had not been completed, and, therefore, had not been inspected or accepted by the city. Kirby's Digest, Sees. 5644, 5647, forbids the board of public affairs to make any contract with any person associated in business with or related within the sixth degree of consanguinity or affinity under the civil law to any member of the board or member of the city council, and declares that every contract in which any for bidden person shall have an interest shall be void. In referring to this statute the court declares that it does not justify a member of the board in becom ing interested in a contract, even after it has been made to the lowest bidder, when his duty requires that he shall inspect and determine whether or not the work due under the contract shall be accepted by the city. In this case the original contract with the contractor was valid, for no member of the board or council was interested
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therein, but the subsequent contract, by which the contractor, before his work had been com pleted and accepted, assigned his claim against the city under the contract to the bank, of which the mayor was president and a stockholder, was within the rule that contracts which place the individual interests of public officers in conflict with their duty to the public, places them under an inducement to act in violation of such duty, and are illegal. By the assignment the mayor as president and stockholder of the bank became interested in a contract, the work done under which he, as a member of the board of public affairs, had to approve and accept for the city. The conclusion is that such contracts were void under the statute, which was only a restatement of the rule of the common law, and being illegal, no court could enforce them. SALES. (Contracts.) Idaho. — Harrison et al. v. Russell & Co., 87 Pac. Rep. 784, is a case which presents the disposition of courts to hold parties to contracts to justice as between themselves, regardless of limitations which one party may attempt to attach to the agreement. The con tract in question was one for the sale of a thresh ing machine containing a warranty limited and conditioned by the following provision: "Con tinued possession or use of machinery for six days shall be conclusive evidence that the warranty is fulfilled to the full satisfaction of the undersigned, who agree thereafter to make no further claim on Russell & Co. under warranty." Notice of defects in the machine was not given six days from time of delivery, but was given six days after use was made of the machine. The court, in holding that such notice was sufficient within the terms of the contract, said: "Now it certainly could not have been the fair intention of either of the parties that the purchaser should for the purposes of this warranty be considered in possession of the property until such time as they might have the property at a place where it would be possible to use it for the purpose of threshing grain. The company and its agents, when selling this property to plaintiffs, undoubtedly learned their place of residence and the community in which they expected to work and operate the property. It certainly could not be said that the six day period began to run at the time of the receipt of the machinery from the warehouse, if, as a matter of fact, the purchasers would have had to transport the machinery 75 or 100 miles across a mountainous region in order to reach the community where they lived and expected to do threshing. A construction that would .hold the 'possession' of the machinery in this warranty to commence, in every case, at the time the
