Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/408

 Notes of Recent Cases. ment of any business offensive to the public, or dangerous to health, and to make police regulations to secure and protect the health, comfort, convenience, morals, and safety of the public, and also to prevent and remove noisances. The ordinance in question provided that if any person should proceed to erect any structure without the consent of the common council, which, when used for the purposes intended, would be greatly injurious to ad jacent property, and destroy the comfort, convenience, peace, and reasonable enjoy ment of adjacent residents, such building should be deemed a nuisance, and the per sons who built it fined, etc. The court says that if it be possible that the colored people of this church can hold their services in an orderly way, then the building cannot be a nuisance; and that it would be strange in deed to find any legal authority declaring that a beer garden or dancing hail may exist in a city, and yet ä fireproof brick church may not be built therein. The fact that the members sang louder in their old and di lapidated building than was agreeable to neighboring residents, the court does not regard as any evidence that such would be their manner of singing in the new one. No authorities directly in point are cited. COPYRIGHT. (MUSICAL COMPOSITION— MIMICRY.) UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT, EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA.

In Bloom & Hamlin v. Nixon, 125 Fed eral Reporter 977, the complainant sued for an alleged infringement of a song which had been composed by Bloom and was per formed in a musical extravaganza entitled "The Wizard of Oz" belonging to Hamlin. The stage business accompanying the rendi tion of the song was prepared by Hamlin's stage director and', as described by the court, required the actress to step to one of the boxes, single out a particular person and sing to him alone, a number of girls being brought upon the stage to sing the chorus, with the usual gestures, postures, and other resources of the actor's and of the

manager's art. "The song" says the court, "aided by these accompaniments—especial ly, as it seems, by the rather striking imper tinence of making one of the audience un comfortable, obtained some popular favor," and the actress who was the most recent singer was regarded as having "made a hit." The defendants were the owners and man agers of another theatrical production en titled "The Runaways" and among the com pany was an actress who possessed unusual powers of mimicry. She imitated the pecu liarities and characteristics of certain act resses, among them the one rendering this song. Her performance was preceded by. an announcement that it was an imitation. She was alone upon the stage, no chorus being present. The court quotes the first verse and chorus of the song, which it says will exhibit its quality, as follows: "Did you ever meet the fellow fine and dandy, Who can readily dispel your ills and woes? Did you ever meet the boy who's all the, candy Where'er he goes? That's the very sort of fellow I'm in love with, He is all the daffodils of early spring, And to me the finest bliss is Just to revel in his kisses When to him I sing:" (Chorus.)' "'Sammy, oh, oh, oh, Sammy, For you I'm pining when we're apart; Sammy, when you come wooing There's something doing around my heart. . Sammy, oh, oh, oh, Sammy, Can't live without you, my dream of joy; Tell me, oh, oh, oh, tell me. You're only mine, my Sammy boy.'" The court says: "As will no doubt be observed, this sounds the note of personal emotion that is characteristic of the lyric." The holdiner is that as the essential feature of the reproduction is the mimicry of the peculiar actions, gestures and tones of the original production, which were not copy righted by Bloom and could not be since