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REMINISCENCES OF A JURIS CONSULT.
REMINISCENCES
Original.
OF
A JURIS CONSULT.
NEW SERIES, NO. 1.
Ir has occasionally happened, I presume to every professional man, to have observed a sort of poetical justice in the results of schemes of villany or oppression, and to have marked the punishment of crime, closely connected with, and consequent upon its apparently successful issue. I do not assert that punishment, immediate and specific, always follows the perpetration of injustice; but instances do sometimes occur, where wrong and retribution are as evidently associated as the flash of the lightning and the loud witness of the thunder. Where such cases do occur, the triumph of society in the apparent interposition of Heaven, to avenge the injury done to social order, is too just to allow sympathy for the offender.
“Tis sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petard.”
I was once applied to by a respectable and industrious mechanic, for advice under circumstances of considerable hardship. Upon a lot in the suburbs of the city, he had, a year or two before, erected a brick house for his own residence with the earnings of his labour, and supposed, that having thus provided permanent shelter for his family, he could, without anxiety, apply himself to his business. Unfortunately, however, for him, the owner of the adjoining vacant lot, finding from the rise in value of real estate, that this unimproved ground would command a good price, bestirred himself to measure and lay out his lot, and in the course of his operations discovered, or supposed he discovered, that the house of Mr. Wharton, my client, encroached about a foot on his western boundary. Being what, in scriptural language, is called “hard man,” but what, in more modern parlance, is designated by a more emphatic term, this unrighteous neighbour resolved to profit by the necessities of Wharton, and knowing that to tear down that part of his house which stood over the supposed boundary would entirely ruin the building, demanded such a sum to release his claim as would have purchased ten times the quantity of ground occupied, even at the advanced price.
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Indignant at such extortion, and totally unable to comply with so unreasonable a demand, Wharton had refused to acknowledge the title, or to comply with the terms of his unconscionable neighbour, declaring at the same time, his opinion of him in terms more intelligible than courteous. In consequence, his vindictive, coming in aid of his avaricious feelings, Mr. Turner immediately set in motion the enginery of the law, to avenge the insult offered by Wharton to his self love, and if, as is generally said, a
long purse were the best friend in a lawsuit, must have prevailed.
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After having heard the details of the case, I directed my client to send me his title papers, and proceeded to investigate, in the proper office, the title of his opponent; his ground, I found to have belonged to Onesimus Wharton, mencing,“ said the deed,” at a corner of Humphrey Collinson's ground, and extending thence westward, One Hundred and Ninety three feet.” This lot had been afterward conveyed by Onesimus Wharton to Ernest Obermeyer, for the consideration of “one dollar, and of other good causes and valuable considerations, the said Onesimus thereunto moving,” and by Obermeyer to Cuthbert Turner, the present plaintiff.
On my return to my office, I found the papers of my client, and discovered that his eastern boundary commenced “at the distance of One Hundred Ninety three feet west, from the west line of Humphrey Collinson's ground; “this west line, therefore, of Collinson, being the “punctum saliens “to both lots, would, when ascertained, settle the question as to the division line of the present litigants.
I will not tax the patience of my readers, to follow me through the musty parchments and ancient surveys with which I grappled, in my researches to discover the true location of “the west line of Humphrey Collinson's ground,” but the issue of my investigations was conclusive, that the point assumed by the plaintiff as the starting point, was three feet and some inches, more westward, than the true corner, and of course my client's building was fully within his own eastern boundary. Gratified as I was to have ascertained this fact, my satisfaction was greatly enhanced by the delight of Wharton when I communicated the result of my researches and showed him the outline of the argument, by which I trusted to establish my view of the case. Cautioning him to preserve perfect silence as to our defence, lest the ingenuity of the opposing counsel, might so load our case with legal subtleties, as to perplex the jury, 1 exhorted him to entire composure of mind, and to avoid conversation with any one respecting the suit.
Those of my readers who are of the profession, will readily estimate the necessity of such cautions, particularly to clients whose feelings of any kind are much interested in the matter at issue; there is among all classes, a “cacoethes loquendi,” a most insurmountable propensity to impart to others, those things which interest ourselves a natural, and perhaps amiable egotism, from the effects of which 1 apprehended some embarrassment.
