Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/82

 NOTES OF RECENT CASES

NOTES

OF THE

MOST

IMPORTANT

63

RECENT

CASES

COMPILED BY THE EDITORS OF THE NATIONAL REPORTER

SYSTEM

AND

ANNOTATED

BY

SPECIALISTS IN THE SEVERAL SUBJECTS (Copies of the pamphlet Reporter! containing full reports of any of these decisions may be secured from the West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, at 35 cents each. In ordering, the title of the desired case should be given as well as the citation of volume and page of the Reporter in which it is printed.) CARRIERS. (Protection of Passengers.) Mass. — In Ormandroyd v. Fitchburg & L. St. R. Company, 78 North Eastern, 739, the degree of care which must be exercised by a carrier in the protection of passengers from injury is con sidered It appeared that on the Fourth of July, a pa triotically inclined citizen had been discharging a cannon from four o'clock in the morning until about half past five in the afternoon, as often as it could be loaded, which operation required from five to fifteen minutes. That during the time of such celebration, defendant's cars had been passing the locality, and that the cannon was loaded with blank cartridges, and was in a yard quite a distance from the street, sending out when it was fired, " a jet of flame and volume of smoke as far as the sidewalk." During the after noon, a passenger on a street car which was pass ing the lot where the cannon was stationed, was injured by being struck by some of the wadding of the cannon.. It was held that the carrier was not liable, as it had no reason to anticipate any dangers to its passengers from such a source. The opinion states, " Nor was it bound to stop its car and investigate for the purpose of seeing whether the cannon was properly loaded or pointed. The firing had been going on all day, and in the absence of any indication to the con trary, defendant had a right to assume that it was not a hostile demdnstration against travelers on the highway, but a simple ebullition of patri otic emotion. ... To require a street railway corporation to have a general oversight of the details of such exhibitions along the line of the highway on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, would be unreasonable. Such care would be inconsistent with the proper trans action of the business." In conclusion the court states that the case widely differs from those where the carrier has reason to anticipate dangers from a crowd of rioters or other outside parties or causes.

INSURANCE. (Beneficiaries —Widow.) Miss. — In Grand Lodge, K. P. of North and South America and Europe, Asia and Africa v. Smith, 43 So., 89, it is held that where insured was coerced into a marriage, and never thereafter cohabitated or visited with his pretended wife, she was not his widow within the spirit and terms of an insurance certificate, payable to his widow. The court limits its determination of the lady's status to the money claim in suit and points out that authorities on collateral attack on a marriage are not in point. This decision does not lay down any rules for the construction of policies of insurance or of cer tificates or by laws in mutual benefit associations. Nor does it in any degree open the door to let in evidence that the assured, when he made the insurance payable to his widow, meant any other person than his real legal widow. The question before the court was not as to the intention of the deceased, but was solely the dry legal question of who was in law the man's widow. And the determination was simply that the pretended mar riage in this case was under such strenuous duress (since " every movement at it and preceding it was under the coercion of pistols and bludgeons ") that it was in reality void, and could be treated as a nullity by a court of equity even in a wholly col lateral proceeding. It has been held that under by-laws of a mutual benefit association provid ing that the proceeds of a member's certificate would be paid to his widow, the legal widow is entitled to the benefit, and no extrinsic evidence is admissible to show that another woman, with whom the member had gone through a mar riage ceremony and cohabited for a long time prior to his death, was intended as the bene ficiary, and this was so even though the date of his membership was after he had left his real wife and was living with the other woman. (Cooley, Briefs on Insurance, Vol. iv, page 3735, citing Bolton v. Bolton, 73 Me. 299.) The prin cipal case is in no way contrary to the rule so laid down. F. T. C.