The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1869-05-26
The New York Code in England.
From the New York Tribune oz

a. J
the 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been SO long out of date that the majority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, OF appreciate the magnitude of the
change, or the terror with which it was con-
templated by many of the lawyers who,
trained under the old practice, could not
comprehend the system under which they
weie compelled to act for the future. Never.
thcless, the change was II simple one-so
simple that we hope to make all our readers
understand it, although gray headed lawyers
OF the old school assure us that they do not
understand it yet.
Prior to 1917 there were two distinct sys-
TENS of law in this State, administered by
distinct courts. One system was called
Law, and the other Equity, although one
was as much law the other. Law "
was administered by the Supreme Court and
other inferior courts: Equity by Chance
ry alone. If man gave you 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.
If you wanted to sell the land and collect the
debt out of the proceeds, you must sue in
Chancery, If a man got you to sign note
by gross fraud, you could resist his suit upon
the note in the Supreme Court; but if he
got it by a fne-spun fraud, you could not
resist him in the Supreme Court, but you
could get an order from the Chancellor send
ing him to Jail if he dared to sue you. So
if one man signed note for the accommo-
dation of another who endorsed it, and the
holder of the note, knowing all about the
facts, released the endorser 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 Wal
worth, would step in, and command the
creditort to stop his suit, or else 60 to prison.
And, it the creditor had been obstinate, he
might have gone on with his suit while in
prison. and the Supreme Court would have
given judgment in his favor, while the
Chancellor kept him in Jail for daring to
ask for that Judgment. Ofcourse no one in
modern times carried his heroism quite SO
far; but there was nothing except the want
OF courage to prevent such a thing from
happening; and orders of this kind were
part OF the daily practice of the court.
OF course tile modes OF practice in the
two courts were widely different. In the
Supreme Court every one had to put his
statements into u 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" although in
many cases the defendant never promised
to do anything of the sort, but, on the con-
trary, had always assured the plaintiff that
i'm of IIeto
before lie would pay. So, if Jones forcibly
you did not owe him, you must allege that
you lost the goods, and Jones picked them
| up, although the story was all nonsense, and
the Court knew 1t as well us 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
notorious falsehood in the plaintiffs state
ment, yet there was only one, and that was
not really necessary.
This absurd double system was made a
little more absurd by the constitution of
1916, which abolished the separate Court of
Chancery, and required the same Judge to
administer both law and equity, so that the
same judge who, sitting at law" declared
that the defendcnt must pay an inequitab!e
debt, issued without leaving his seat, an
order to commit the plaintiff to Jail if he
dared to ask for payment.
he Code of Procedure cut up this system
by the roots. 1t united law and equity in a
single system, to be administered in uni
form manner by any and all courts. 1t made
it the duty of every judge to refuse all de-
mands which, under the old system, the
Chancellor would have forbidden the plain
tiff from presenting, and to grant, in a single
F. suit, all that 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 in
stead OF setting out the evidence, and then
requiring the defendent to answer upon oath
whether this evidence was true, the code al
lowed each party to examine the other as
witness, but forbade the use of the pleadings
for this purpose.
; The code thus adopted was, as everybody
| knows, almost entirely the production oil
MIR. David Dudley Field, on whose head a
large number of his professional brethren
| and a few of the judges for many years
poured the full walls of their wrath; for the
adoption of these reforms, which Mr.. Field
had publicly and privately advocated fol
ten years, with but faint hope of success
was very sudden, and the bench and bal
were generally unprepared for it. The new
system made havoc of a mass of learning
which the old practitioners had spent theil
lives in gaining, and in which they took a
special pride. 1t is true that this learning
was intrinsically of no earthly use; but ther
the law had been bent out of shape on pur
pose to make it of use. The lawyers fell
very much as the inhabitants of Capetowr
may be supposed to feel about the Sues
canal. or the residents of Panama about the
Pacific railroad The law had been crooked
all their lives, and they felt it to be 9
monstrous outrage upon their rights that il
should be Strengthened after they butt com
Portable houses upon its corners. Indeed
they could not comprehend it. Grave
Judges decided that the old lies must be
told at the accustomed places, even though
the plaintiff was required to swear that his
complaint was true. The oath was to b.
construed in Pickwickcn sense, and the
plaintiff must swear that the defendant haC
promised. when he never had promised, be
cause he ought to have promised, and tn,
court would assume that what ought to nav
been done soas done. As for the union of Law
and equity, it was repeatedly held that i
had not been accomplished, and could no
possibly be accomplished All this solemn
nonsense has been thoroughly exploded
but it lasted six or seven years, and was ac
companied with a continual fire of sarcasm
upon the " sciolist," the visionary" an,
the presumptuous revolutionist" VIII
drafted the CODE
Twenty-one years have passed by. TIL
Legislature OF this State has persistently re
fused to complete the code, (of which only
portion was ever adopted, to reform tn
| 1aracticn ~ our ,crir,AiianI