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The Green Bag

1881 to furnish annual passes for life to Mott J. Robertson and Martha J. Robertson as part consideration for a right of way through the Robertson farm in the town of Dryden. The constitutionality of the federal pure food law is to be tested in a suit brought by the Hipolite Egg Company of St. Louis against "James Wilson, Secretary of Agricul ture. The action was begun late in June in the Supreme Court of the District of Colum bia, and is reported to be backed by the beefpackers and other powerful interests. The cause of action resulted from a seizure of canned eggs that had been preserved by the use of boric acid, and an injunction preventing further interference with the plaintiff's busi ness is sought. The federal grand jury which had been investigating the $1,250,000 loan which the American Sugar Refining Company made on December 30, 1903, to Adolph Segal as a part of a plan whereby control of Segal's Penn sylvania Sugar Refining Company was ob tained, returned an indictment July 1 against the corporation and eight individuals con nected with the loan or the events that fol lowed. The indictment, containing fourteen counts, charged a conspiracy to restrain inter state and foreign commerce in violation of the Sherman anti-trust act. The eight indi vidual defendants entered provisional pleas of not guilty in the United States Circuit Court at New York on July 6. After receiv ing the pleas, Judge Hand rejected the request of Assistant United States Attorney Crim that the defendants be held in $10,000 bail each, announcing without any request from the attorneys for the indicted men that he would parole them individually in the custody of their counsel. Supreme Court Justice Gaynor of the Appellate Division heard arguments at his summer home at St. James, Long Island, N. Y., July 3, on the application for a change of venue from Westchester County to New York County, to decide the question whether Harry K. Thaw, the slayer of Stanford White, should be released from the Matteawan In sane Asylum. District Attorney Jerome of New York County having done just what he said he would, namely, to retire from the case unless the hearing was to be held in New York County, the Attorney-General took up the fight to prevent the discharge of Thaw from the Asylum. Justice Mills of the Supreme Court of Westchester County, who had refused to send back the case to Manhattan,remanded Thaw to the White Plains jail July 6, pending Justice Gaynor's decision. Justice Gaynor rendered a decision July 9 denying the appli cation to transfer the trial to New York County. The motion for a change of venue, he declared, might equally well have been heard by Justice Mills. It was announced that the trial would immediately begin before Justice Mills and would continue till the ques

tion of Thaw's recovery from insanity should be decided. Personal— The Bench Judge J. S. Keyes of Concord, Mass., a graduate from Harvard in the class of '41, is the oldest judge in Massachusetts and holds his district court daily. The University of Cambridge conferred the honorary degree of D. C. L. upon Hon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, on June 23. The United States Senate on June 16 con firmed the appointments of George W. Wood ruff to be District Judge for the Territory of Hawaii and of Peter D. Overfield to be Judge of the district of Alaska, division No. 4. Ex-Circuit Judge Abner Smith, formerly of the Cook county court of Illinois, con victed of conspiracy to cheat and defraud in connection with his wrecking of the Bank of America, is now an assistant librarian in the state penitentiary in Joliet, Ill. Judge R. S. Bean, recently appointed to the federal bench, was tendered a banquet by the law alumni of the University of Oregon June 15 at Portland, Ore. Addresses were made by W. B. Gilbert, Judge of the United States Circuit Court, President Campbell of the University, and others. "The boycott is cowardly, un-American, utterly indefensible and the American people will never submit to it. I will never submit to it. I would die in my tracks first." In these words did Judge George Gray arraign the boycott at Scranton, Pa., June 8, at the hearing on the matter in dispute between the Scranton Street Railway Company and the members of the union. Judge John W. Price, who retired from the judgeship of the Corporation Court of Bristol, va., on June 30, was educated in an Atlanta law school and practised law until 1904, when he was elected Judge of the Corg>ration Court for a term of eight years, is resignation is with a view to re-entering the practice of law. Hon. Joseph L. Kelly, a most successful lawyer of Bristol, was named to succeed him. Delaware's new judiciary was inducted into office June 16 in the Kent county court house, and the retirement of the old bench and the entering in of the new one was of an im pressive nature. Before an audience of rep resentative Delawareans Charles M. Curtis, Chancellor; James Pennewill, Chief Justice, and Associate Judges Daniel O. Hastings, William H. Boyce, Henry C. Conrad and Victor B. Woolley took the oath of office for terms of twelve years each, and their first official duty was to convene the regular June term of the Supreme Court of Delaware.