The Logan County banner. [volume] (Logan, W. Va.) 1889-1903, 1891-05-07
PARADISE FOR LAWYERS.
Electrical Inventions Are Daily Opening Uf
New Fields of Litigation.

Electrical Inventions Are Daily Opening IN
New Fields of Litigation.
One of the effects of the rapid intro
duction of electrical inventions during
the last quarter of century has been
to open up entirely new fields of litigar
ton for the lawyer and new questions
for the bench. This in a general way
is true of every new creation Of indus
trial property, but with electricity
many of the problems to be solved are
quite novel, and a judge has often to
go wide of practice or precedent before
he can determine the legal principle
proper to apply in the case before him.
Thus, for instance, in Pennsylvania
the question has recently been adjudi-
Gated upon whether local electric-light
company was manufacturing concern.
The court says it is not. and yet all that
1t does is to make current for sale A
similar point is that raised as to the
durability of electric current The
law officers of the Treasury say 1t is in
tangible and therefore pays no duty,
yet it can be measured to the minutest
fraction.
The Western Union Company has had
many fight as to whether pole lines
had any right on the public highway,
and Massachusetts, says they have, as
transporting messages is part Of the
work of intercourse for which roads are
laid out and maintained The Ameri-
can Bell Telephone Company for years
spent hundreds of thousands Of dollars
in defending the abstruse doctrine that
telephone speech can only be trans
mitted by an undulatory current, that
a make-and- break current would not do
it and that other devices are simply q
juggle to get around Bells patent In
electric lighting millions Of investments
have hung on ''iilament," and on the
exact meaning that the courts might
attach to the word.
Among the latest legal fights is one
that probably the United States Supreme
Court will have to settle-namely.
whether the telephone companies or the
electric railway companies have the
right to use the earth as return" cir.
cult. The telephone people claim that
the leakage from the railway throws
their service out Of gear and renders
the instruments useless The railway
people reply that their telephone
friends have a remedy in metallic cir
cults, and that no one electrical interest
anyhow can 'sown the earth Already
this dispute has cropped up in nearly .
score Of States and the increasing mum.
Der and magnitude Of the electric roads
renders 1t more and more important.
In the meantime the telephone com
panies, as far as possible, are putting
their metallic circuits in, with maElxed
Improvement in the service.
New questions thus crop up every
day. In the use, for example, OF the
alternative currents now becoming 50
common not q little has depended on
the patentability Of the principle 81
transforming the current and d.
whether ssstep up was equivalent u
q 'sstep down. in other words, whetheI
raising the voltage and decreasing ~
ampereage was = simple and inevitable
converse 70 decreasing The volts and
raising the amperes Another poIn(
around which legal controversy b.
gathered Is the dne one - 10 whers
''lowr potential ends and high potsn.
~ be1in& cn(sxV N@4H