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The Green Bag
of old equipment and surplus supplies, and in the repair of cars being excepted. CORPORATIONS. (Sale of stock at fair value voidable by minority stockholders.) 0. 0. A.—A sale of corporate property to the owner of a majority of the stock, for its fair value, but for less than might have been ob tained for it from another, at a regular meet ing of the directors and the stockholders at which the purchaser's stock was voted for the sale, is held, in Wheeler v. Abilene Nat. Bank Building Co., 159 Fed. 391, 16 L. R. A. (N. S.) 892, to be voidable at the election of the minority stockholders. EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY. (Workmen under different employers not fellow ser vants.) N. Y.—The case of Stanley Hod Ele vator Co., appellant, v. John Henry, respon dent, 114 N. Y. Suppl. 38, came before the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in January on appeal from a judgment handed down by the Supreme Court in February, 1908, against the Stanley Hod Eleva tor Co., the appellant in this action and defen dant in the court below. The plaintiff in the court below was a common laborer in the employ of J. T. Finn & Co., who were engaged in the erection of a six-story building and obtained from the defendant a hoisting elevator with all its appliances, and an engineer to operate it. The plaintiff was seriously injured by an accident which the jury decided to be due to negligence in the operation of the elevator. The Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the decision of the court below, declaring that the liability of the defendant was established within the authority of a number of cases, the principles declared in Mills v. Thomas Elevator Co. (54 App. Div. 124, 66 N. Y. Suppl. 398, aff. 172 N. Y. 660, 65 N. E. 1119) and other ruling cases. With reference to the contention of counsel for the appellant that this case differed from those on which the Supreme Court had based its decision, in that the engineer operating the elevator was a fellow servant with the plaintiff arid the plaintiff's employer had the right to dis charge him, on this point the court held that the fact that the engineer reported for work to the foreman and received directions from the employees of Finn & Co. "did not operate to change his relation to the defendant as its servant (Johnson v. Netherlands American Steam Navigation Co., 132 N. Y. 576, 30 N. E. 505)," and the appellant's contention for
non-liability could not be sustained on the ground that the plaintiff and engineer were engaged in the same employment, for the engineer had no connection with the work for which the plaintiff was employed, and was not, therefore, a fellow servant. EVIDENCE. (Exhumation of dead body to establish innocence of accused.) Tex.— In Gray v. State, 114 S. W. Rep. 635, it ap peared that Gray and another man had engaged in an altercation which resulted in the death of the latter. The state con tended that Gray had shot from behind while he insisted that he had shot in self-defense while deceased was advancing upon him with a drawn knife. There was a ragged bullet hole in the breast of deceased, which accused declared marked the entrance of the bullet but which the state asserted indicated its exit. To settle this question accused en deavored to have the body exhumed and examined. If the bullet was in the body the defense would be greatly strengthened and if it had passed through, the evidence would be advantageous to the state. The exhuma tion was vigorously opposed by the state. It seems strange that the evidence which would have upheld one theory or the other was so violently opposed by the prosecuting attorney, especially when the life of a pos sibly innocent man hung in the balance. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas decided that every consideration of respect for the dead would suggest that the dust of the deceased should remain undisturbed unless justice required a disinterment, but in this case the examination was considered neces sary for the protection of appellant. EVIDENCE. (Telephone conversation overheard through connecting instrument.) N. Y.—The Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Term, has decided (January, 1909) that a witness may testify as to conversation overheard by means of a connecting tele phone. In Rimes v. Carpenter, 114 N. Y. Suppl. 96, the question being that of conver sation between a broker and his customer, the testimony of a witness who had over heard the conversation by the use of another telephone at the broker's place of business had been excluded by the court below, on the ground that since the witness heard the conversation upon another instrument in a room other than that in which the defendant's agent was speaking, the evidence was in its nature incompetent. The Appellate Term,
