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The Green Bag

enjoin him and his publisher (see Banks v. Manchester, 23 Fed. Rep. 143) from printing in that periodical the decisions of the Supreme Court of Ohio as they were handed down. Mr. Kerr fought the case successfully through all the courts and finally won a decisive victory in the Supreme Court of the United States (see Banks v. Manchester, 128 U. S. 244, 32 L. ed. 425, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 36), establishing a new principle in the law of copyrights — that the opinions rendered and handed down by the supreme courts of last resort of the country are the property of the people at large, and not of the publisher of the volumes of official reports. Mr. Kerr then accepted a position as assistant editor to Mr. William G. Myers in the preparation of "Myers' Federal Decisions," and later was employed by the West Publishing Company as editor of the National Reporter System. While still at St. Paul, Mr. Kerr received over tures from and accepted a position with the Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company and removed to Rochester, New York, where he rendered efficient aid to Mr. Robert Desty in the prepa ration of the annotated edition of the New York Chancery Reports, published by the Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company. He resigned his position with the publishing company to accept a partnership in the practice with Mr. Philetus Chamberlain, which partner ship was not dissolved until Mr. Kerr's removal to New York City. Mr. Kerr now became for a short time the editor of the American and English Corpora tion Cases and the American and English Railroad Cases, published by the Edward Thompson Company, and was one of the first editorial writers on the American and English Encyclopaedia of Law, and for some of the leading features of that valuable work the publishers and the

profession are indebted to Mr. Kerr — as an inspection of his articles in the first eleven volumes of the first edition will show. While at Rochester Mr. Kerr pre pared an edition, in two volumes, of Benjamin on Sales, for Charles H. Edson & Co., of Boston; the third edition of Crocker on Sheriffs and a work on Business Corporations, for Banks & Co., of Albany, N. Y.; Before and at Trial, for the Edward Thompson Co.; Wiltsie on Mortgage Foreclosures (second edition, entirely re-written) for Williamson & Co., Rochester, and a work on Homicide, for Banks & Bros., New York City. In 1889 Mr. Kerr entered into a con tract with Banks & Bros., for the prepa ration of a treatise on Real Property, in three volumes, and in the fall of that year removed to New York City, enter ing the office of Morse, Haynes & Wensley, 10 Wall Street. Later he formed a partnership with Charles A. Gregory, under the firm name of Kerr & Gregory, with offices at 261 Broadway, where they did a general practice, and on Mr. Gregory's retiring from the practice with Philip Van Volkenburgh, under the name of Kerr & Van Volkenburgh, with offices at 68 Broad street, and made a specialty of corporation law. As a member of that firm Mr. Kerr made the investigation and submitted the written report upon which was founded the proceedings in the United States Circuit Court, before Judge Lacombe, in which the affairs of the Colorado River Irrigation Company were wound up and a great fraud upon the public ended. In this investigation the laws of Mexico were involved, and Mr. Kerr examined minutely the five codes of Mexico, making, and incorporating in his report, translations of all pertinent laws.