Ruling Cases FROM COURTS OF GREAT BRITAIN CANADA, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA AND BRITISH EMPIRE EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED VOLUME I THE LAWYERS CO-OPERATIVE PUBLISHING CO. ROCHESTER, N. Y. 1911 Copyright 1911 by THE LAWYERS CO-OPERATIVE PUBLISHING Company. 245082 E. R. ANDREWS PRINTING COMPANY, Rochester, N. Y. PREFACE. 1 I NCREASING appreciation of the substantial unity of the law of the English-speaking countries has been strikingly illustrated by the sale, not only in Canada and other parts of the British Empire, but in the United States also, of English text-books and English law reports. The favorable reception of the English Ruling Cases did much to make the great English decisions familiar to lawyers and judges on this side the water, and the sale of various sets of English reports in reprints or otherwise is large enough to show that the value of the English decisions has received general recognition. There is also a marked tendency, both in Canada and in the United States, to recognize that the value of an important decision is not destroyed by the fact that it was rendered by a court on the other side of the international boundary. This series of British Ruling Cases is intended to include the recent cases of exceptional value from the most important courts throughout the British Empire. It is to be expected that the largest part of the cases of chief value will be decided by the courts of England. Next in number to the English cases will doubtless be those decided by the courts of the Dominion of Canada. But the purpose is to include with equal freedom cases from the courts of Ireland, Scotland, Australia, or any other division of the British Empire, whenever those decisions seem to be of sufficient importance to the lawyers in Canada and the United States. This series of reports will be a companion series to the Lawyers Reports Annotated. They will be prepared by the same editorial staff, and annotated with equal thoroughness and exhaustiveness. A great deal of the work in the present iii volume has been done by Mr. E. S. Oakes, and a considerable part by Mr. J. T. Winslow. This series of reports is in a sense a continuation, but with a decided expansion, of the plan of the English Ruling Cases, as it takes the cases from the British Empire, instead of from England only, but it continues the English Ruling Cases in the sense that it will include the most important cases from the English courts decided since that series terminated. These reports may be cited either as Brit. Rul. Cas. or more briefly as B. R. C. Rochester, N. Y., June, 1911. |