New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-05-15


Legislature of this State revolutiOnized the
practice of law by the adoption of the Code OF
Procedure. The old system has been so long
out of date that the majority of our readers
can scarcely remember what it was, or appre-
ciate the magnitude of the change, or the terror
with which it was contemplated by many OF
the lawyers Who trained under the old prac-
tice, could not comprehend the system under
which they were compelled to act for the
future. Nevertheless, the change was
| simple one-so simple that we hope to
make all our readers understand it, al
| though gray-headed lawyers of the old school
| assure as that they do not understand it yet.
Prior to 1917, there were two distinct sys-
TENS of law in this State, administered by dis
tinct courts. One system was called Law, and
the other Equity, although one was as much
law as the other. Law" was administered
by tho Supreme Court and other inferior
Courts Equity by Chancery alone. If
man gave you q bond and mortgage, and you
wanted to sue on the bond, without troubling
Yourself to sell the land, you must sue IN the
Supreme Court. II you wanted to sell the
land. and collect the debt out of the proceeds,
Won must sue in Chancery. If man got you
to sign a note by gross fraud, you could resist
his suit upon the note in the Supreme Court;
but if he got it by the-spun fraud You
conld not resist him in the Supreme Court,
but you could gel an order from the Chan
ceor sending him to Jail he dared
to sue you. So il. one man signed note Tor
the accommodation Of another, who indoned
it, and the holder of the note, knowing all
about the facts released the indorser from the
debt. or extended his time for payment, he
could nevertheless recover the face OF the note
from the maker in the Supreme Court; but
Equity, in the person Of Chancellor Walworth,
would step in, and command the creditor to
stop his suit, or else 20 to prison. And, II tie
creditor had been obstinate, he might have
gone on with his suit while in prison, and the
| Supreme Court would have given Judgment III
his favor, while the Chancellor kept him IN
ail for daring to ask for that judgment. Of
| course no one in modern times carried his he
roism quite so Ear; hut there was nothing ex-
cept the want OF courage to prevent such
| thing from happening; and orders OF this kind
| were part Of the daily practice of the Court
| OF course the modes of practice in the two
! Courts were widely different In the Supreme
| Court every ono had to put his statements into
| n particular form. half of which was. in most
| cases, untrue. but which was understood to mean
something else. Thus plaintiff must always
state that the defendant "promised to pay" al
though in many cases the defendant never prom
ised to do anything OF the sort, but, on the con-
trary, had always assured the plaintiff that he
| would sec him Mt very great distance before
he would nav. So, if Jones forcibly took youI
household goods for rent which you did not
owe him. YOU must allcgc that you lost the
goods, and Jones picked them up although the
story was all nonsense, and tho Court knew II
as well rs you did.
In Chancery it was different. Each party
was required to set forth the facts of his case
and though it was usual to insert one nOtori-
Gus falsehood in the plaintiffs statement, yet
there was only one, and that was not really
necessary.
This absurd double system was made little
more absurd by the Constitution of 1916, whlcl
abolished the separate Court OF Chancery, and
required the same Judge to administer bot
law and equity, so that the same Judge who
sitting cat law" declared that the defendant
must pay an inequitable de5t, issued, wthou
leaving his seat an order to commit the plain
tiff to jail If lac dared to ask for payment.
: The Code Of Procedure cut up this system
by the roots. It united law and equity in
single system, to bo administered in uniform
manner by any and all Courts. 1t made it til,
duty of every Judge 10 refnse all demand
! which, under the old system, the ChaneellO
: would have forbidden the plaintiff from pre-
seuting, aud To grant, in single suit, ali thai
; the plaintiff could before have obtained by
bringing two actions. 1t adopted The Chancery
system OF pleading, with the exception of the
little falsehOod mentioned above, and except
also that instead of setting ont the evidence
and then requiring the defendant to answer
upon oath whether tins evidence was true, the
Code allowed each party TO examine the othoI
as a witness, but forbade the use of the plead
ngs for this purpose.
The Code thus adopted was, rs everybody
, knows, almost entirely the production of Mr.
David Dudley Field, on whose head large
number of his professional brethren, and {
few of the Judges, for many years poured tho
full walls of their wrath. For the adoption o.
these reforms, which Mr.. Field had publicly
and privately advocated for ten years, will
but faint hope of success, was very sudden
and the bench and !ar were generally unpre.
| pafcu IOT IT, lHc Now sySlcIh MAUI H'NoV VI
a mass of learning which the old practitioner
had spent their lives in gaining, and in which
they took q special pride. II is true that this
learning was intrinscally of no earthly use
but then the law had been bent out of shape
on purpose TO make il of usc. The lawyers
felt very much as the inhabitants of Capetown
may DO supposed to feel about tho Suez Canal
or the residents of Panama about the Pacific
Railroad. The law had been crooked all their