Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/294

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Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, i$}4 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. Our " Disgusted Layman " thus frees his mind upon " Dog Law " : — Editor " The Green Bag." Mr. Roscoe Pound, in his article in your April number, is rather too ironical for a layman, pleased or disgusted, to follow into the meat of his views, but one "Disgusted Layman" kicks at several bits of dog law that Mr. Pound intimates are the real stuff. I don't believe it is law, in Michigan or anywhere else, that it isn't actionable for a dog to soil freshly painted steps. Why shouldn't the owner of such a dog pay the damage as well as for any other mischief the dog may do? Of course shooting the dog for it is a gray horse of another color. The step man ought to have a right to collect damages from me if my dog spoilt the painting of his steps, and if he shot the dog, I ought to have the best kind of a right to collect two hundred dollars from him, for I would n't take that for my dog under any circumstances. Your Disgusted "Layman is the most ardent of dog-lovers, but for all that he is " disgusted" at the asininity of many dog-owners who howl about some body shooting their dogs when those dogs have come to be common nuisances to a neighborhood, and their owners know it, and never try to keep the nuisances within bounds. I'd like to know why in thunder the " law has no respect for the characteristics and prejudices of dogs"? Judge Finletter of Philadelphia stands as high as the next Common Pleas judge in the coun try, and he laid it down that if a visitor came to the front door he was all right, and if bitten by the watchdog, could recover damages; but if he went snooping around back doors he was a trespasser, and if the dog bit him, it was the visitor's lookout, and that is just what every sensible watchdog will do every time. Isn't that taking notice of the " char acteristics and prejudices of dogs "? There is one piece of stupidity, very ancient, none

the less stupid because of its ancientness, nor the less ancient because of its stupidity, that makes a dog a wild animal, not property. How any rusty fuss can say that a sheep worth $1.50 is property, while the sheepdog that tends the flock, whose training alone cost $50 (if paid for, or is worth that), is not property, is truly typical of Bracton, and almost worthy of the Supreme Court of Alabama, that held that the Alabama statute making dogs personal prop erty, and subject of larceny, was no good because it didn't specify whether the larceny was petit or grand! That's Bractonish for you, all over. However, the champion stupid law as to dogs be longs right in your revered Massachusetts, which provides certain restrictions and penalties about dogs "wholly or in part of Great Dane blood"! Now just imagine Judge Gray, Judge Hoar, or some such, listening to the arguments of lawyers, not any one of whom knows a smooth St. Bernard from a mastiff, or a foxhound from a pointer, and to a lot of testimony from expert dogmen as to whether Jumbo is all mastiff or ninety-five per cent mastiff and five per cent Great Dane! Then, the most expert judge of dogs that ever lived will often be stuck to decide whether a certain dog is most mastiff or Great Dane, or wholly of one or of the other. So don't you Massa chusetts lawyers hold your noses too high on doglaw. Your Disgusted Layman.

LEGAL, ANTIQUITIES. The ordeal of water was actually practiced in England down to the year 17 12, when ChiefJustice Parker declared that if the trial by water caused the death of a suspected witch, he would hold every person engaged in it guilty of wilful murder. And in 1751 a man named Colley, who, notwithstanding this warning, had been one of a party to try a witch by the water ordeal, in the course of which she sank and died, was con victed of murder and executed.

FACETIÆ. A judge in Texas, newly appointed under the reconstruction acts, was asked by an attorney 267