The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1913-03-04
POURS HOT Shot
into LUMBER
COMPANY
SUPREME COURT USES cAUsTIc
LANGUAGE IN ITS DECISION
AGAINST INeRAM-DAY.
JUDGE BARRETT is UPHELD
Case Is Affirmed and Man Whose Tim
Der Was Appropriated BY Manufac-
turers viii Receive $1,000 Damages,
the Instructions of Lower Court.
Special to The Ne1cS.

Jackson, Miss, March 4-"The rec
ord of this case reads like a page torn
from the history of the Spanish Main
in the good old days when might was
right, and when the distinction 'meum
ct tuum' was frankly disregarded," is
the way Judge Cook of the Mississippi
Supreme Court put it yesterday, when
the supreme court handed down a de-
cision in the case of the Ingram-Day
Lumber Company VS.. Sustain Cuevas,
affirming the action of Judge T. H.
Barrett of the circuit court of Harrison
county in giving peremptory instruc-
tons to the jury to find for Cuevas,
which it did, giving him $1,000 dam
ages because the lumber concerns
agents had gone on his property and
cut down valuable trees, which it ap-
propriated to its own uses.
The records in the case, briefly, are
that Cuevas bought 100 acres of land
from the Gulf Coast Lumber Compa-
ny in 1903, and about the same time
Bacon & Gallican of Harrison county
sold certain lands to J. T. Jones. The
lumber company attempted to buy the
the land from Cuevas, and failing,
claimed that Jones owned the land, and
it had a contract to cut the timber
Cuevas objected, but the company cut
the timber, and Cuevas went into the
courts and won out
In rendering the opinion the supreme
court poured volley of pretty hot shot
into the lumber company. After be-
ginning as above, the opinion reads:
"Ingram-Day Lumber Company, ap-
pellant, coveting and longing for the
valuable pine timber standing upon
a certain quarter section Of land in
Harrison county looked up appellee
Gan ignorant and illiterate mani who
was in possession Of same under color
of title, and had been in such posses
sion for seven or eight years, and Of
fered to buy the much-desired timber,
but appellee declined to be persuaded,
and refused to part with the timber.
Failing along this line appellant
searched the records of the land titles.
and discovering an outstanding title
in ]. T. Jones endeavored to secure
this title, but as fate would have It
this title could not be obtained. Then
1t was that the spirit Of the buccaneer
was aroused, and so appellant pro-
ceeded to take by force that which it
had failed to secure by the methods
usually adopted by civilized man.
without the least pretense Of legal
or moral right the timber was, over
the protest of appellee, cut down and
converted to the use of appellant.
When appellee, a mild-mannered
man, resorted to the courts, demanded
Judgment against appellant for this
high-handed destruction and CONVEX
sion of the trees, appellant sought
cover behind the title of Jones, in spite
of the fact that Jones had declined to
give it his title, and in the face of the
fact that Jones had in the meantime,
quit claimed the land to appellee"
The supreme court, further along
in the opinion, said:
'The bald facts are that appellant
wanted the timber and, being unable
to get it by fair and lawful methods,
it proceeded to cut the timber without
the leave or license of anyone"