Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/158

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Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, 15^ .Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of inter est to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia, anec dotes, etc. THE GREEN BAG. Editor of the Green Bag. Perhaps it is cheeky for a layman to offer advice to law yers on legal matters, but you see, the layman, being the sufferer by the law, is more interested in dodging it than the lawyer is. Now I take it that there is no necessity for wasting your space in illustrating what an instrument of rascality the mechanic's lien law has become, in its giving parties, sec ond to the contractor, the right to file liens against a build ing, without any reasonable method being provided or al lowed whereby the owner could ascertain when he was safe in paying his contractor. These rascalities must be known to all lawyers who have a mechanic's lien law in their State. But certain and perfect relief has been granted the man who wishes to build a house and don't like paying the same bill twice, through recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the morphology of which seems to be about this : A certain owner provided in his contract with the contractor for the house he was building, that no mechanic's liens should be filed by anybody against that house or ground. A sub-contractor filed a lien, and finally it came before the Supreme Court. Of course the sub-con tractor blathered about " anybody else signing away my rights! " (at least I reckon he did — all of them do that), but the Court wouldn't have it that way, and said that the second-hand man could not have any rights in the matter except those that came to him through the man-in-chief, and that man-in-chief, having signed away his rights to file the lien, no such rights remained anywhere for anybody, and be that good or bad "law," it's the sort of plain sense that any man can see. Then a lot of fellows in Philadel phia, calling themselves " The Builders' Exchange," or some such title, kicked up a great dust; they flooded the State with dodgers about this " unjust decision," and got the Legislature to pass an act nullifying it, and there's where they broke their own necks. The Supreme Court isn't used to being sat down on in that style, and it promptly held this nullification no good, as contravening the provi sion of the United States Constitution that no State could pass an act impairing the force of contracts. There you see where the virtuous " builders " got themselves into a deadly scrape, by arraying the force of the United States Constitution against them, when they only had the State of Pennsylvania up to that time.

Before and after the enactment of this nullification, there were some more cases in the Supreme Court, and because the decisions of that Court didn't jump the way the lawyers thought they would, they — the lawyers — assified them selves by saying the Court was .ontradictory. Now " A Disgusted Layman " naturally likes m see a Jourt assify itself, but this time the laugh was on the awyers, not on the Court; and soberly speaking, I have never met a more striking illustration of how lawyers will persist in setting their ideas of " The Law " above the purposes for which law exists, than just here : A party had a clause in a con tract with a builder about like, " This building shall be de livered free of mechanics' liens," and the Court said that that didn't prevent sub-contractors from filing and enforc ing liens, that it was only a bargain as to there being no liens on the building when the contractor delivered it and didn't bar out the filing of liens. Now, despite all the lawyers in America, this position of the Court seems as clear as a hole in a ladder. The wording of that contract might have meant one thing or might have meant another; it certainly was not free from any ambiguity; and whether it is or isn't law, it's common sense that, when a man signs away a right he has under the law, there must be no room for dodging about what he meant; the language must be capable of no double meanings. Well, there the whole• business stands, as a layman sees it, and now for the advice this state of affairs gives to lawyers. Now I'm not saying that Pve got that all down to a dot, I may have missed dotting several is and crossing some t's, but I know that Pve given about the full size of it for all practical purposes. So it seems to me that there wasn't any particular law about this business; it wasn't a matter of statute or even common law, it was only the Court interpreting and apply ing certain deeply fixed principles of the United States Constitution to certain facts. Surely it must be that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was right in its decisions, for they are the plainest requirements of ordinary good sense, and follow as matters of necessity from the prem ises. Therefore, as the whole business rests on an inter pretation of the United States Constitution, the law of the decisions should be as good in New York or Wisconsin as it is in Pennsylvania, and what lawyers should do is to inform any client who has bought property, thereby evincing in sanity, or is building a house, which is the medical term for being incurable (that's Sam Weller, isn't it?), that incor porating such a provision in the contract between him and his builder ought to make him safe, and if some second hand man tries to support his lien, take it up to the Supreme Court of your State and see if you don't knock second-hand out. If this course is resorted to, it will be but a few years until lien laws are dead letters everywhere. The great lawyer of the district your " Disgusted lay man " lives in recently afforded a strong evidence of how '37