Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-06-05
TWENTY YEARS IN COURT.

To the Editor of the EAGLE.
Old Tom Benton wrote about his
thirty years experience in the United
States senate, and why may l not write
about my twenty years experience in
court. True, a good many people may
not, and probably do not regard district
court as being as dignified body or TIL
bunal as tie United States senate.
Neither is twenty years as long a time
as thirty years. However, am inclined
to think that he who has sat in court for
twenty years, most of the time as the
official stenographic reporter, has OBJ
served a good many things, a few Of
which | am tempted to tell, less | might
be regarded as an unwilling witness.
Why do people so to law, anyhow:
Now ii seems to me that this is a fair
question, and, if so, it demands a fair
answer
In the first place, all probate business
such as The settlement OF de-
cedent's estates, and all mat
tiers pertaining thereto, must nee
essarily be made matter of record III
court. A large part of the criminal
docket in all our courts is the direct fruit
of the liquor traffic. In an experience OF
twenty years in court | can now only cali
to mind one trial for murder that was not
caused by this accused evil. There are
many reasons for the large number of
civil actions on our court dockets: many
of which prove in the end to be more
tedious and expensive to htigantS than
profitable.
There are actions pending in all our
courts to-day to quiet the title OF real es-
tate. many Of them necessarily quite eX-
pensive and exceedingly tedious, that
might have been avoided by the payment
of small fee to some competent attorney
to make an examination OF the title of the
real estate in question at the proper time
Many actions are commenced because the
ma jOrity of clients do not know how to
state the facts in case to a lawyer. The
attorney vino has not found himself,
more than once, in the midst of a trial
unable to prove half the facts necessary
to make out his case, has had an exceed
ingly limited practice. And then, law
yerS, like merchants, mechanics, farm
erS and those Of the several other avoca-
tons in life are not Just as honest as
they should be. and are in many cases
too ready to advise clients to 90 to law
for the selfish motive of getting a fee
And then there are men i'll almost every
neighborhood who have the devil SO
thoroughly developed in them and are
so completely under the sway and do
minion of his satanic majesty that they
are never so happy as when causing
their neighbors trouble, aud this ac-
counts for many cases found upon our
court docket, such as complaints for di-
vorce. actions for SANDER. &c, &c. But
after all probably the most difficult char
acter to understand about the court room
is the witness. Go upon the streets of
Wichita tomorrow and subpoena the
best men in the city to testify in some
important case and let the lawyers who
| had them subpenaed talk with them. and
somehow these witnesses feel under
some sort of obligation to testify more
! freely for the side that had them sub
poenied than they would have felt had
they been subpoenaied and sworn as wit
nesses by the opposite side. An old
fashioned alopathic dose of cross-exam-
| nation by an experienced counsel has
been known in more than one case to be
! beneficial as well as instructive to this
large class of witnesses. Then witnesses
as a rule are too ready to talk. We have
a good many unwilling witnesses, but
not one such for every twenty who are
too anxious to talk. never hear an inn
portant case tried where a number of
such witnesses are called to the witness
stand to testify. without being reminded
of what Thomas Carlyle says in his
writings in reference to the people of his
country, The population of England is
thirty-five millions-mostly fools"
W. c. SANDEFUR.