PREFACE. BEFORE the publication of the present work, the two principal recent books of reference for case law were a Common Law Digest of seven volumes (founded on the late Mr. Fisher's work, published in 1870), and Chitty's Equity Index of nine volumes. Both these works included. cases decided as late as 1883. From that date to the present time, Annual Digests have been published, five of which, viz., 1884 to 1888 inclusive, were afterwards republished in a consolidated form. The arrangement of the subjects in the Equity Index and the Common Law Digest was essentially different, both as to the titles chosen and also as to their contents. For instance, the cases relating to Evidence, Discovery, and Appeal were to be found in the Common Law Digest under those headings, but in the Equity Index under the head of Practice. The Equity Index contained no Common Law cases; the Common Law Digest contained many Chancery cases bearing on Common Law subjects from 1866, and a smaller number of Chancery cases upon those subjects for ten or fifteen years before 1866; it did not, however, deal with Common Law cases decided upon Chancery subjects. The result was that neither work was complete, and many cases could not be found in either publication: the Equity Index had none of the old cases relating to the construction of Wills decided at Common Law, the Common Law Digest omitted those very cases because they dealt with matters almost exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Chancery Courts. Owing to the changes introduced by the Common Law Procedure Acts, and more particularly by the Judicature Act of 1873, it has become necessary for the practitioner to consider all cases bearing on the particular subject on which he is engaged, irrespectively of the Courts in which the cases were decided. It has, therefore, been thought désirable that all the cases should be brought together, so as to avoid the necessity of consulting each of the books above mentioned. A large number of cases that had been omitted in the Common Law Digest and the Equity Index are included in the present work, but by leaving out some very obsolete matter, and by shortening the statements of the cases, the size has been reduced by about one-third as compared with the previous publications. The following summary of two practice cases that have been omitted as obsolete is here inserted, to show the quaintness of our old procedure :— Plaintiff, for putting in a long replication, fined 107. and imprisoned, and a hole to be made through the replication, and hanged about his neck, and he to go from bar to bar. Milward v. Welden, Toth. 101. [1566.] The court granted a peremptory mandamus, in the first instance, to the bailiff of the Honor of Pontefract, to deliver up the corpse of a person who had been committed to his custody under a ca. sa., and which he detained on the ground of certain fees due to him remaining unpaid. Wakefield (Bailiff), In re, 1 G. & D. 566; 5 Jur. 989; S. C., nom. Reg. v. For, 2 Q. B. 246. [1841.] The subjects in the present work have been grouped together as much as possible, so as to make reference to them more easy; for instance, Company contains all matters relating to Directors, Shares, Debentures, Winding-up, &c.; Husband and Wife contains the Rights and Liabilities arising from the contract of marriage, viz., Separate Estate, Dower, Freebench, &c., and the law as to the dissolution of that contract. An exception to this rule has been made in the heading of Practice, which deals with a large number of subjects, some of which can reasonably be considered as independent headings: Accounts and Inquiries, Appeal, Arbitration, Costs, Discovery, Evidence, Interpleader, &c., will therefore be found under those titles, so as to render reference to purely practice cases more simple. Numerous cross-references are added, to show the general titles under which certain classes of cases will be found. A full list of titles and cross-references is printed at the commencement of the first volume. The general rule as to the arrangement of the titles is to set out at the commencement of each a full list of the sub-divisions, and to break up those sub-divisions as far as possible by inserting catch-words of a distinctive character. One of the difficult points an Editor of a Digest has to decide is whether cases said to be overruled should be omitted. A case may be overruled by the decision of a superior Court, or by the Legislature. Supposing a case to have been overruled by a superior Court, it does not follow that the profession has heard the last of it, or that it ought not to have been included. For instance, a decision of Lord Romilly, M.R., given in Labouchere v. Dawson, in 1872, though it had been repeatedly questioned, and in 1884 overruled in Pearson v. Pearson, was, in 1895, held by the House of Lords, in the case of Trego v. Hunt, to be good law. Where the Legislature has overruled a decision, it may still be useful to record it, on the ground that it is a matter of historical interest. The general rule has, therefore, been adopted, to include all cases, whether overruled or not. Another difficulty is caused by decisions on repealed statutes: in some cases the decisions are as valuable as if they had been given upon a statute still in force; in others they are only useful as historical facts. Decisions on repealed statutes, therefore, as a rule, have been included. A further difficulty is to indicate the date of each case. The series of reports are so numerous, and extend over so long a period of time, that the practitioner is apt to forget their chronological order, and consequently he requires the date to be inserted after each case, or else some chronological table by which the date of the volume can be fixed. It is estimated that the present work contains more than 300,000 references to decided cases; if the dates were given to each reference the size would be increased very considerably, and the price rendered proportionately higher. Another objection to giving the actual date is, that as each date consists of four figures, there are four chances of error in every case; and though in theory accuracy is always possible, no printer or editor of experience would dare to assert that after using all the care possible, figures can in practice be accurately reproduced. Another objection is, that the reports which contain a particular case do not agree as to the year in which it was decided; this objection is more applicable to the older series, in other words, to those series in which the date is more essential. An approximation to the true date is, however, all that can reasonably be required, for it is immaterial whether a case was decided on the last day of the sittings in one year, or on the first day of the sittings in the subsequent year. It is expected that the Table of Abbreviations of the names of the Principal Reports cited, and the Chronological Table of the Reports commencing in 1810, that are contained in the first volume and in the Index volume, will give all the assistance required in the case of series which in themselves contain no indication of the year; in series such as the Law Journal Reports, the Weekly Reporter, the Law Times, and the Law Reports since 1890, the year is easily ascertained from the references themselves. Owing to the size of the present work, no heading of Words and no list of Cases followed, overruled, or questioned, can be rendered sufficiently useful to justify their being included. For information as to the former the practitioner is referred to specific titles in this work. Information as to the latter must be sought in books dealing with that particular subject, and containing quotations from the judgments bearing upon them. The Index of Cases does not contain all the different names that reporters have used to designate each particular case: had all the names been given the List would probably have been more than double the size it now is. It not unfrequently happens that (without taking into account mere changes of letters, e.g. Davis and Davies, &c.) a case has several totally different names. For example, in mandamus to Justices, we find one series gives the case as Reg. v. Surrey JJ., another as Reg. v. Smith and others (Justices of Surrey), another calls it by the names of the parties, the informant v. the defendant, another gives it with the defendant's name v. the informant, and, possibly, ex parte the defendant. The same remark applies, with the necessary alterations, to mandamus to County Court Judges. Fortunately for the profession, reporters and Editors of series now current, as a general rule, arrange the name they propose to give to a case capable of being differently styled. When there are several cases bearing the same name an attempt has been made to distinguish them in the Index by inserting one of the references. This reference will, in most instances, show the Court in which the case was decided, and will give its approximate date. The Editor will be greatly obliged if members of the profession would inform him of any omissions in the work, or of inaccuracies, either in the statements of or the references to any of the cases contained in it. JOHN MEWS. GOLDSMITH BUILDING, TEMPLE. |