Page:Address as the ABA president.pdf/11

 effecting a change, has guarded the employer by some excellent exceptions. Thus, when the neglect of a fellow servant is known to the employe [sic], or when a defect in the machinery, ways or other appliances, is known to him, and he fails to report it to a superior for an unreasonable time, he can not [sic] recover if he sustains an injury by such a defect, or such a neglect of a fellow servant.

Another act declares that the payment of a mortgage debt in Alabama, before or after the law day, reinvests the title in the mortgager without further conveyance.

A further act, authorizes the joinder of counts in trespass and case in the same action. This effort was clearly intended (writes a distinguished but facetious brother lawyer from Alabama), to dispense with too accurate a knowledge of pleading in young, inexperienced Alabama barristers, who were extremely solicitous to open books and to get to work speedily.

By a former act of this state, defendants in criminal cases were allowed to make unsworn statements on their own behalf as in military courts. Under a construction of that act it was held, that the prisoner was not, in strict legal parlance, a witness, and could not consequently be subjected to cross-examination, but might state as much or as little of the facts of the case as he thought proper.

This ruling led to a recent repeal of that statute. In lieu thereof, the legislature provided, that prisoners might make themselves witnesses in their own behalf, if they thought proper to do so, but if they did testify they became subject to cross-examination. It was further provided, that the failure of such prisoner to testify should not be commented upon or be used to the prejudice of the prisoner.

The Alabama State Bar Association are [sic] authorized and clothed with power in its own name to institute and prosecute in any court having jurisdiction, proceedings against any practicing attorney in Alabama against whom complaint may be made of having been guilty of malpractice, or any act, or omissions for which attorneys may be disbarred.