The San Francisco call., 1898-02-04
MADEIRA LAWYER IN HOT WATER
 ..
  Charged With Altering a: Signed Bill of . ...:
  Sale. :"
 
Should the Allegations Be .Sus- : tained He Is Guilty of
  Forgery.
 Peculiarly Complicated Case Which the Accused Says He Gan Easily
 Straighten Out. '
Special Dispatch to The Call.

FRESNO, Feb. 3.-A complaint was drawn up in this city this afternoon charging Francis A. Fee, ex-District Attorney of Madeira County with forg- cry. The document was mailed to Dis-. trict Attorney w. H. Larew and war rant was issued upon it. Fee was im- mediately placed under arrest and was arraigned at once. He demanded that his preliminary examination be set for hearing as soon as possible. It was fixed for tomorrow forenoon at 10: o'clock, and he was then released on bail. :
 The alleged forgery is of a peculiar nature, being the claimed changing of a document after it was signed, which Is defined as forgery under the law. The alleged crime grew out of a busi- ness transaction between the Ceni- mercial Bank of Madeira and Watkins & Prosser of the Hunter Company of that town. Some time last September Watkins & ProSser became embar- rassed financially and they made a bill of sale to the bank of all their lumber and personal property of every de= scription to secure the payment of their debts, amounting to between S2Q.. 900 and 30,000. The bank, in consideras tion of the bill of sale, assumed pay>. ment of all the liabilities. = =. :.
 Fee acted as attorney for the. bank and prepared the bill of sale, which was signed by Watkins Prosser.: Among the creditors was the firm of RosenthaI 6 Kutner, to whom the lufI1-.. Der concern owed S2429. It is. stated that that being their claim it was on the original bill of sale and was. as stunned by the bank. After the bill of sale was signed by Watkins & Prosser: it is claimed that the bill of sale was returned to Attorney Fee, who is al- legged to have removed the first page of the document, in which the Rosen- thai & Kutner claim is said to have been set forth The document was typewriter, and Fee is alleged to have substituted a duplicate page, excepting that Rosenthal & Kutner's claim was omitted in the substituted page. ::
 The alleged tampering with the doc ument was not discovered until recent ly, when Rosenthal & Kutner present. ed their claim to the bank for pay- ment The bank cashier referred to the bill of sale and stated that he knew nothing of the claim, as it did not ap- pear in the bill of sale, which was sup posed to contain all the liabilities of the erstwhile lumber firm, and they re- fused to pay the claim.
 RoSenthal asserts that Lawyer Fee had assured him that the claim of his firm was included among the list of creditors of Watkins & Prosser. It is claimed, on the other hand, however, that the substitution of the page was made before the document had been signed. When Fee had prepared the paper the bank officials told him that the bank had an agreement with Ro- seminal & Kutner different from that with the rest of the creditors, and Fee claims that acting upon that informa- tion he made the change complained of. He declares that it was before the bill of sale was signed.
 MT. Fee is quite a prominent lawyer of Madeira and was the first District Attorney of that county, assuming the office in 1893, when Madeira was sep arated from Fresno and made a county by itself. He took a prominent part in the fight for the formation of the new county.