The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1909-11-20

In his annual address delivered last
Tuesday, President James X. Batchel-
der spoke at considerable length on
the laws delays" The evils of such
delays are generally recognized and
yet the remedy is not Altogether easy
to find. We desire that no person
shall be denied his full legal right,
and yet we go so far, sometimes, to
prevent the denial of every privilege
that may be demanded with any show
OF proprety, that we go to the other
extreme and permit an almost end
less round of litigation. We are so
careful to give every accused Grimm
al every opportunity to clear him
self that many a scoundrel goes UNI
punished.
In the current number of the At
lantic, George w. Alger says:
"Over a year ago the writer listen
ed to a lawyer arguing an appeal in
the Appellate division of the SUI
preme Court in New York. 1t was a
very embarrassing law suit about the
title to a small plot of land in the
city. AT the close of his argument, the
lawyer said: This case has been
tried three times in the lower court
by juries, has been heard on appeal
in this court twice, and once in the
Court of Appeals. The expenses of
the litigation already have absorbed
the value of this property in dispute.
If there be some way which the court
may find for deciding finally this dis
pute here in this court without re-
curing it to be tried over again, it
will be a blessing to all concerned
This blessing the court found itself
unable to confer, and six months lat
er the case again was on the first
round of the judicial ladder for a new
trial in the lower court, and within
the past week has been once more
decided in the Appellate Court, and is
now on its weary way to the Court
of Appeals. This is hardly an excep-
tional case observation-disclosures in one
form or another is a Characteristic of
our judicial method
OF our own knowledge we may cite
similar cases, not a few. in which the
property involved in a suit is eaten
up in prolonged litigation. When.
by means of bubbles and TECHNICAL
ties justice is long delayed, and the
cost becomes a burden, ii is no long
er justice in the full sense of the
term, even though the right wins in
the end
The Manchester n. H., Mirror and
Farmer says. AN appellate court of
Indiana has manifested earnestness
as well as courage in penalizing an
obstructive. pointless appeal from a
proper judgment. The case was one
in which the plaintiff was a poor man
and the defendant a railroad corpor-
alton, and in dismissing the appeal
the reviewing court declared that 1T
was based on technical proceedings
in the court below, none of which go
to the substantial merits of the case
The Judge who wrote the opinion,
with natural and righteous indigna-
ton. spoke of the appeal as an H.
lustration of vexatious litigation that
crowds our courts to the detriment of
meritorious actions and that should
not go unrebuked.'
And the rebuke, fortunately, was
more palpable than judicial lecture
There is an all-but-forgotten statute
in Indiana which empowers the APP
pellate judges to impose fine equal
to 10 per cent of the judgment on any
legal party that attempts to secure
by appeal, a reversal of a just verdict
on trivial and purely technical
grounds"
President Taft frequently has call
ed attention TO the delays in liti-
cation and has scored them severely.
The poor man should be placed on the
same footing as the rich man, so far
as possible. When justice comes
slowly the poor man sometimes is
obliged to abandon his case because
of the expense. An appeal to a high
err court sometimes means a miscar-
riage of justice because the party in
the right cannot afford to incur adj
ditional expense.
1t is not easy for a layman to pre-
scribe a remedy for these delays, but
when leading lawyers and judges
recognize them there is hope for a
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