Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-04-03
THE CALF CASE.
An Iowa Lawsuit That Began
 Over Twenty Years Ago.
After outlasting One Generation It Is Taken Up by Another-Everybody Connected with It Bankrupted
 Except the Lawyers.

few days ago, says the New York Tribune, the telegraph brought the in telligence that the famous "Jones coun- ty calf case" the most celebrated pro- ceedings at law ever before the Iowa courts, had been finally brought to a close after over twenty years of active life by a verdict in the supreme court for the plaintiff. We refrained from commenting on 1t at the time as we could not believe the report. It did not seem possible that the able counsel employed on both sides would let it die outside of the United States supreme court. Later advices, however, seem to show that the first report was only too true and that the Jones county calf case is no more. As thing reared by the hand of man 1t was, we suppose, only natural that it should have an end.
 It was bright day in early June, 1869, that five young calves might have been observed vending their way down Jones county road, as young calves will do. They were the property of man named Johnson. Soon these five thoughtless young calves came to the garden of a man named Miller. They broke into this garden and ate up and tramped down sundry vegetables. Miller came out and "siced" his dog on the maurauding calves. The dog chased them back up the pretty Jones county road on a fast run Indeed he chased them so fast that when they ar- rived at their home three of them died from exhaustion. The others were in- jured, one of them dying in 1879. The other, it is true, fingered along as late as 1888, but 1t never was what 1t should have been and was always more or less troubled with palpitation of the heart. The next day after the calves came home bringing the dog behind them Johnson engaged counsel and began a spirited defense. This was the be- ginning of the Jones county calf case. The amount for which John son sued was forty-five dollars, the value of three calves. Miller, throgh his counsel, Set up the following de- fense: First, that the calves were never at his place; second, that he noticed when they broke in that they were sick and about ready to die; and third, that they didn't die at all, but were sold by Johnson to man in a neighboring county. The case got a good start in '69 and ran on vigorously through the early and late 70's, took a new lease of life in December, 1879, and galloped along through the sos, showed great activity during 1890, and opened the present year in perhaps the best shape that 1t has ever been in; but before scarcely a month has passed it Is cut off in its prime. Miller died in 1878, but his children kept up the fight; Johnson held out to 1889, dying the next day after his last calf, but active grandchil- dren stood ready and anxious to take up the struggle. Why the Iowa SUI preme court, composed of judges who were formerly lawyers, let the case end, we cannot conceive.
 For it is on the lawyers that the bur den of the ending of the Jones county calf case falls the heaviest. The first dispatch said significantly: "It has banlrupted everybody connected with it except the attorneys" It comes with especially crushing effect on Col. Markham and family, counsel for the plaintiff. Col. Markham began with the case in 1869. He gave up his other practice in 1875 and devoted himself solely tS it. Four years ago he associ- ated his son, George Markham, a rising young lawyer of thirty, with him in the case, and it was the coloneIs intention to retire at the end of this year and leave it altogether to the younger man. George Markham has little son six years old, and many times his father has taken him on his knee and told him how he expected him to enter the law and some day succeed to the case on which his grandfather and father had lived so long. Now, of course, all of these bright prospects are shattered. Col. Markham, it is true, can retire with comfortable fortune and George has an excellent start in life, but the Iowa supreme court has heartlessly left the boy with no prospect whatever.
 Thus the Jones county calf case passes into history along with the civil war, the surrender of Cornwallis and the discovery of America.