THE 697 REVISED REPORTS BEING A REPUBLICATION OF SUCH CASES IN THE ENGLISH COURTS OF COMMON LAW AND EQUITY. FROM THE YEAR 1785, AS ARE STILL OF PRACTICAL UTILITY. EDITED BY SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART., LL.D., CORPUS PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 2 & 3 MYLNE & CRAIG-6 & 7 ADOLPHUS & ELLIS-2 & 3 LONDON: SWEET AND MAXWELL, LIMITED, 3, CHANCERY LANE. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN & CO. 1900. NEW YORK PREFACE TO VOLUME XLV. Three cases in this volume are classical: Lechmere Charlton's case, p. 68, on contempt of Court (a subject rather prominent of late); Hitchcock v. Coker, p. 522, on agreements in restraint of trade; and Pickard v. Sears, p. 538, on estoppel. In Hitchcock v. Coker, Sir William Follett's argument contains an ingenious attempt (p. 529) to explain the dyer's case in the Year Book of Henry V. -which would now be regarded as a case of quite ordinary and harmless limited restraint-by suggesting want of consideration as the real objection. But there is nothing of the kind in the book, and, moreover, the doctrine of consideration was still unformed. The truth is that the law has completely altered its point of view on this subject: exceptions introduced at first with much hesitation have practically become the rule. Tasker v. Small, p. 211, is still a profitable corrective to the wild notions of equity jurisdiction and procedure which occur in many old text-books and some old decisions, and of which the traces are perhaps not yet wholly removed from books that may come into students' hands. Millington v. Fox, p. 271, is an interesting early example of the questions which we are beginning to collect under the new rubric of Unfair Competition. In these cases there has been some doubt whether the plaintiff's right should be put on the ground of a kind of property in his trade mark or name, or on the ground of fraud in the defendant, or conduct equivalent, after notice, to fraud. Apart from specific rights created by statute, the latter view seems the sounder, and the better supported by recent authority, though in Millington v. For the conception of a quasiproprietary right is more prominent. Powell v. Rees, p. 747, introduces the subject-since much more fully discussed, and perhaps not yet finally settled-of the remedies available for a landowner whose minerals a stranger has taken by trespass. The copyright of Smith's Leading Cases came before the Court in Saunders and Benning v. Smith and Maxwell, p. 367. Church v. Imperial Gas Light and Coke Co., p. 638, was an important and beneficent decision on the inherent powers of a trading corporation to do the necessary business of its trade without the formality of the corporate seal. Rex v. Davie, p. 494, bears witness to the local pronunciation of "Crediton, otherwise Kyrton, in the county of As the rhyme has it: Devon." "Kirton was a market town The case may be welcome to men of Devon for that reason, though not otherwise of any great interest. F. P. |