fact of his interest, or should he decline to advise on account of such conflicting interests?

Answer. In the opinion of the Committee, the attorney should decline to advise on account of his conflicting personal interest in the matter involved. His personal interest, and the quasijudicial character of the municipal body, differentiate this case from those where upon full disclosure of his professional relation to both parties to a controversy, a lawyer may advise either party as to the law applicable thereto.

Question. A. B., an attorney, is in partnership with C. D., a layman, in the collection business, and, under the partnership agreement, divides the earnings of that business with C. D. He does not divide with C. D. the fees which he may receive upon any act or service performed under his name and by virtue of his office as an attorney. A part of the partnership earnings, however, is derived from commissions charged upon collections made by attorneys to whom claims are sent by the partnership. Is there any impropriety in the above practice? Answer. In the opinion of the Committee, it is improper for a lawyer to engage in partnership with a layman and divide fees. (See Q. & A. 47, Ia, Ib, IIa.)

A fee charged for professional services is none the less a reward for professional services because it is called "a commission." Lawyers in other States, who are dividing with a collection agency here the compensation they receive for professional services, are themselves, in the opinion of the Committee, guilty of unprofessional conduct. That the service excludes the bringing of suit or appearance in court does not change the inherent character of the situation. In performing the service the lawyer's professional skill and responsibility are engaged. There is no objection to a lawyer engaging in the collection of an account (See Q. & A. 47, Ib), but when he does so, he does so as a lawyer and is subject to the ethics of his profession. Question. X., a woman, marries A. She then marries B., who is ignorant of her previous marriage to A. She then secures a decree of divorce from A. and marries C. B. desires an annulment because of X.'s incompetency to contract the marriage with him. C., in order to remove the marriage to B. as an apparent obstacle to the legality of his own marriage relation, is willing to contribute to the expenses and counsel fees of B. in procuring an annulment decree.

In the opinion of the Committee, would there be impropriety in a lawyer accepting a retainer from B. to procure an annulment decree, with the knowledge that C. is contributing to his compensation, or a joint retainer from B. and C. to procure such decree for B.?

Answer. In the opinion of the Committee, the lawyer in question might with entire propriety advise both B. and C. as to the legality of B.'s marriage with X. and might with propriety accept a fee from each for such advice. There seems, therefore, to be no reason why, if he is retained by B. to have that marriage annulled, he could not accept a retainer to which C. contributes. It is to the interest of C., to whom X., is now married, to have her prior marriage to B. annulled; and on the facts stated a clear case for such annulment in favor of B. seems to be made out-it being assumed that the marriage of X. to A. was valid and was in full force at the date of her marriage ceremony with B. The doubt in the mind of the inquirer arise, we assume, from an apprehension that some suspicion of collusion might attach to the suit, as C. would be supposed to be acting in the interest of his wife, the defendant in the action. But such apprehension, we think, is groundless. X. could, we think, maintain the action of annulment as well as B., and we do not see why the husband of X.

might not with propriety bear a part or even the whole of the expense of a suit, no matter by whom instituted, which will serve to remove an apparent impediment to his own marriage.

Question. Husband and wife, residents of this State, are not living together; the husband having actually and by express declaration deserted the wife. There is no ground known to

the wife on which she could obtain a divorce in New York. Let it be assumed that facts existing at the time of the desertion will give ample grounds for divorce at the instance of the wife in several other States. There has been absolutely no collusion in bringing such facts into existence. The husband, who actively desires a divorce, and his attorney, have requested that the wife accept a substantial money payment for herself in settlement of all claims for future maintenance and also a substantial fee for her attorney; and in return for these payments, that she go to another State, where existing facts would be grounds for a divorce, and there procure a divorce decree, it being the husband's plan to go to such State and accept service of papers.

Will you kindly give me the opinion of your Committee on the propriety of such an arrangement.

Answer. In the opinion of a minority of the Committee, it would be unprofessional for a member of our bar to advise, or assist in, the arrangement suggested, the object of which is to escape the operation of the laws of this State; but a majority is of the opinion that the arrangement is not inherently improper, provided there is no imposition on the wife, and the arrangement is fully disclosed to the foreign Court, and the change of residence is actual and in good faith.

Supplementary Answer. The inquirer has remonstrated with the Committee for its answer to Question No. 100, insisting that the Committee should have answered the question as presented, without suggesting conditions not included therein. The Committee, in consequence, supplements its former answer as follows:

A majority of the Commitee was unable to agree with the minority that the mere fact that the statutes of New York do not provide for the relief desired in the case suggested is sufficient ground to condemn the arrangement or the participation of a New York lawyer in aid of relief elsewhere according to the law there in force. In the opinion of the majority, the vice of such arrangements does not arise from the state of the law in New York, but from possible imposition upon the injured party owing to the importunities of the wrongdoer and the conditions imposed by him, possible imposition upon the foreign Court by concealment of the actual facts, and a fraudulent resort of the foreign State by one only colorably a resident of such State. As the question did not negative these possibilities (though it did not, it is true, explicitly suggest them), the majority concluded that it should point out specifically the only conditions upon which, in its opinion, the arrangement would not be open to condemnation. It is unwilling to indicate that it would consider as reprehensible, participation by a lawyer in such arrangement, if carefully conditioned as it has suggested. It does consider, however, that the careful observance of such conditions would tend to minify the number of such arrangements and to rob them of the character which had led to what it deems the most serious criticism.

"The idea is Utopian, that government can exist without leaving the exercise of discretion somewhere. Public security against the abuse of such discretion must rest on responsibility, and stated appeals to public approbation." Johnson J., in Anderson v. Dunn, 6 Wheat. 226.

LAW AND THE TIME OF DAY

ALTHOUGH the great majority of objections raised to the recent alteration of time by the Summer Time Act 1916 clearly proceed from a profound ignorance of the true significance of time in the abstract, it is not to be denied that this alteration may involve some people in complicated legal questions. It is not intended to embark on a discussion of the merits and demerits of the recent measure. It is intended to confine this article to a consideration of time as applied to law-to the legal aspect of time. It will be apparent to the reader that this subject partakes of what we may call a highly illusive nature. Confusion readily arises unless the mind concentrates itself upon certain cardinal propositions. Possibly if these cardinal propositions were better understood, it would lead to a better understanding of the effect of the recent statute; and no doubt many persons who from an innate conservatism put forward objections to the change of time would have refrained from doing so had they appreciated these cardinal propositions.

Now, in the first place, time is a purely relative thing. In one sense every man carries his time on his own head, and his midday is the time when the sun passes over his own meridian; that is to say, over the imaginary line on the plane which passes through both poles and the individual in question. There are, in theory, two points, one at each pole, and a third point in the head of the individual. Construct an imaginary plane cutting these three points, and extend that plane in imagination upwards and outwards, and when the sun is halfway across it so that the plane divides the sun, at that moment it is midday to the individual.

In the second place, for the purposes of convenience and to insure uniformity, the Greenwich mean time has been established in the country, and, instead of there being forty million different middays in this country, one midday has been fixednamely, when the sun is bisected by the meridian plane drawn through the poles through Greenwich. All time in this country is set, by a fiction, as if the individual's head was in the Greenwich plane, whereas in fact it may be many miles east and many more miles west of that plane. Local mean time in every place in England differs from Greenwich mean time, except in places situated on the first meridian which passes through Greenwich. Here we may observe that the new Act does not purport to alter Greenwich mean time. On the contrary, time for general purposes in Great Britain is set by the new Act by reference to Greenwich mean time. It is now one hour in advance of Greenwich mean time.

Until comparatively recently the clocks and timepieces of the country were set by local mean time. There is on record an instructive case-Curtis v. March (3 H. & N. 868)-where the sitting of the Assize Court in a county town in the West of England was fixed for 10 a.m. The court clock was set by Greenwich mean time and at ten o'clock by that the court sat, and the plaintiff's counsel, in the absence of the defendant's counsel, opened his case and the court gave judgment for the plaintiff. A few minutes afterwards the defendant's counsel came into court sharp to the hour of ten o'clock by the town clock, which recorded the local mean time. The defendant's counsel asked to be heard, but the court refused. The defendant appealed and a new trial was ordered. This case occurred so late as 1859.

So late as the year 1880 it was found expedient to remove doubts as to whether expressions of time occurring in Acts of Parliament, deeds and other legal instruments related in England and Scotland to Greenwich time, and in Ireland to Dublin

time, or to the mean astronomical time in each locality; and consequently it was laid down by the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 that whenever any expression of time occurs in any Act of Parliament, deed, or other legal instrument, the time referred to should, unless it was otherwise specifically stated, be held in the case of Great Britain to be Greenwich mean time, and, in the case of Ireland, Dublin mean time. It has been urged from time to time that the case of Gordon v. Cann (80 L. T. Rep. 20) has gone far towards making this Act a dead letter. But this does not appear to us to be so. In the last-mentioned case the court had to consider the requirement imposed by the Local Government Act 1881 that carriages should bear lights as from an hour after sunset, and, notwithstanding the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880, it was held that time for the purposes of this requirement under the Act of 1881 was to be regarded by reference to the time of sunset in the locality. It would seem to us to be abundantly clear that, in construing the provisions of the Act of 1881, time had to be taken locally, for the clear object of those provisions was to protect persons on the road from the dangers arising from the state of the light, which would necessarily depend on the setting of the sun in the locality, and not the setting of the sun at Greenwich.

The dies naturalis of Lord Coke extended from midnight to the following midnight-that is to say, for the full twentyfour hours. The period from sunrise to sunset the same learned authority referred to as dies artificialis, and it is instructing to observe how many doctrines of the common law were founded on the latter conception of the meaning of "day." No doubt in former times, when darkness had its peril, now happily a thing of the past, and when light was not so easily supplied by artificial means as nowadays, the period between sunrise and sunset had a significance which it no longer has. It is now the dies naturalis that except for certain purposes, such, for instance, as the law of distress, is the important period.

There is no period of time that gives rise to more questions before the courts than the month. This is not surprising, as, even in the most popular use of the term "month" there is necessarily ground for ambiguity. There are, of course, twelve months in the calendar year; therefore the term "month" may be used in the sense of one equal twelfth part of 365 days, which obviously does not work out at a round number of days. Again, it may be used in the astronomical sense-namely, as meaning a lunar month of twenty-eight days. Again, it may be used as denoting one of the calendar months, such as August. The primary legal meaning of the word "month" in legal documents is the lunar month. This was in recent times confirmed by the late Sir George Farwell, when a judge of first instance, in the case of Bruner v. Moore (89 L. T. Rep. 738; (1904) 1 Ch. 305). "It is clear," said Lord Denman in Simpson v. Margetson (1 Q. B. 247), "that 'months' denote at law lunar months; unless there is admissible evidence of an intention in the parties using the word to denote 'calendar months.'" But we have the authority of the same learned Chief Justice that there is an exception to this general rule by the custom of the City of London. According to him, in all mercantile transactions in the City a month means a calendar month.

The meaning of the word "month," or, rather, the primâ facie meaning of that word, is regulated by statute as regards its use in legislative enactments. In the year 1850 an Act of Parliament, known as Lord Brougham's Act (13 & 14 Vict. c. 21), set up the calendar month as the primâ facie meaning of the word "month" when occurring in statutes. The Act has since been repealed by the Interpretation Act of 1889. By sect. 3 of that Act it is laid down that in every Act passed after

the year 1850, whether before or after this Act of 1889, the expression "month" shall mean calendar month unless the contrary intention appears. The effect of these statutory provisions concerning the word "month" seems to be to reverse the primâ facie meaning of the word, so far as regards its use in modern statutes. But the question what amounts to a contrary intention must always remain a somewhat doubtful one.

Turning now to the new Summer Time Act-the official short title of which is the Summer Time Act of 1916-it is important to observe that by sect. 1, sub-sect. 3, it is laid down that whenever any expression of time occurs in any Act of Parliament, Order in Council, order, regulation, rule, or by-law, or in any deed or other document, the time mentioned or referred to shall be held, during the prescribed period, to be the time as fixed by this new Act. We have already pointed out that under the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 where any expression of time occurs in any Act of Parliament, deed, or other instrument, the time referred to shall, unless it be otherwise specifically stated, be held to mean Greenwich mean time in Great Britain, or Dublin time in Ireland. The two Acts can be easily read together. Thus, supposing a statute lays it down that something shall not be done after the hour of 10 a.m. under the Act of 1880, that means 10 a.m. by Greenwich mean time. Under the new Act it means 9 a.m. by Greenwich mean time.

If we apply the principle of construction according to the case of Gordon v. Cann (sup.), where the Act prohibits, let us say, the doing of some act after one hour after sunset, the new Act does not affect the case. True, an expression of time occurs in the Act we have supposed, but it would seem, according to the principle of Gordon v. Cann (sup.), that the fixing of time by reference to sunset (as we have supposed) is not an "expression of time" within the meaning of sect. 1, sub-sect. 3, of the new Act. This to the reader may appear to be rather a bold proposition. We do not profess to lay it down with judicial authority, but pending a more authoritative statement, we hold to our view with some confidence.

In the opening lines of this article the view was put forward that the recent alteration effected by the Act would involve some people in some complicated legal questions. One of these questions has already been agitated, but not as yet in the courts —and that for very obvious reasons. The Act defines "the prescribed period" as two o'clock in the morning, Greenwich mean time, on Sunday, the 21st May, until two o'clock in the morning on Sunday, the 1st Oct. next. At the latter time the clocks will be put back an hour. Suppose the first of twins be born in the early hours of the 1st Oct. next, say, at 1.45 a.m. according to summer time, and the second twin is born half an hour later, the recorded hour of the second twin's birth, after the clock has been put back, will be 1.15 a.m. on the 1st Oct. 1916. The recorded hour of the first twin's birth will be 1.45 a.m. on the 1st Oct. 1916. By the adjustment of time the younger twin will have been born half an hour earlier than the elder!

It is obvious that some abbreviation ought to be adopted, such, for instance, as "S.T.," denoting time as reckoned under the Act, to put on record the fact that the hour recorded is an hour in advance of Greenwich mean time. This ought only to be done where a matter of record is concerned. All that is necessary is to avoid confusion hereafter by making it clear that the hour is computed as required under the Act. As to the great majority of objections to the Act, they have already disappeared, and the nation is fast appreciating the real benefits effected by the measure.-Law Times.

Cases of Interest.

RIGHT TO RECOVER DAMAGES FOR INJURY TO FEELINGS IN ACTION OF ASSAULT AND BATTERY.-The Louisiana Supreme Court in the case of Traban v. Benoit (La.), 71 So. 893, lays down the novel rule that where a stronger man, without sufficient provocation, assaults a weaker one, though the latter may sustain no serious physical injury, damages will be awarded for the injury to his feelings, and, by way of discouraging his assailant, and others, for so readily and unlawfully availing themselves of the accident of superior strength.

QUOTATIONS OF STOCK EXCHANGE AS PRIVATE PROPERTY.— That stock quotations collected and tabulated by a stock exchange are private property is the recent holding of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Western Union Tel. Co. v. Foster (Mass.), 113 N. E. 192. Rugg C. J. says: "The quotations, when collected and tabulated by the Exchange, constitute its private property. As such they are entitled to every protection afforded by law to any other private property. Like other property they may be kept by their owners to themselves, or sold or distributed to others, or made known to some and denied to others. Their communication to many different persons under contracts does not make them public and is not such a publication as destroys their character as property. Strangers may be restrained from wrongfully obtaining possession of the information, and wrong-doers will be prevented from intermeddling with it.” The case also considers the power of a State to compel a telegraph company having the right to distribute quotations received from a stock exchange in another state to refuse to discriminate in the matter of whom it shall The conclusion is reached that the State has no such power as the subject relates to interstate commerce.

serve.

VALIDITY OF STATUTE PROVIDING FOR RAT-PROOFING OF BUILDINGS TO PREVENT SPREAD OF BUBONIC PLAGUE.-The case of City of New Orleans v. Beck (La.), 71 So. 883, involved the validity of an ordinance of the city of New Orleans providing for the rat-proofing of all buildings and structures, in the city, for the purpose of better preventing the introduction and spread of bubonic plague. It was held that the passage of the ordinance was a valid exercise of the police power of the state in the interest of the health of the people. A portion of the opinion of Land J., was as follows: "The very able and ingenious counsel for the defendant in the present case has been driven to the necessity of assailing the ordinance as invalid, because it interferes with his client's property rights, in that it forces him to reconstruct his building, erected about twelve years ago, in accordance with the building ordinances of the city of New Orleans. As the city board of health since 1898 has had the power to pass health and sanitary ordinances to regulate the erection and arrangement of buildings, and for their vacation or demolition when necessary for the protection of the public health, it follows that defendant constructed his

building subject to the right of the board of health to exercise its powers over the structure to the point of demolition. The necessity for and the extent of the rat-proofing required by the ordinance was one of fact and of public policy which belongs to the legislative department of the government."

RIGHT OF OWNER OF LAND FRONTING ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO COMPLAIN OF OVERFLOW OF SUCH LAND CAUSED BY BUILDING OF LEVEES.-The United States Supreme Court in an opinion by Mr. Chief Justice White in Cubbins v. Mississippi River Commission, 241 U. S. 351, denies the right of an owner of

Fourteen years ago the first volumes of FEDERAL STATUTES ANNOTATED were published to fill a definite need for a complete, authoritative and thoroughly reliable work on Federal Law.

Its publishers were well and favorably known to every user of law books. Many hundreds of lawyers did not hesitate to subscribe to the work before it was completely issued. Their confidence was not misplaced. Its superior editorial work was recognized by all, and when completed (over ten years ago) it had taken its place as the leading and almost universally used work on the subject.

From that time to the present it has kept up with the progress of federal jurisprudence by means of frequent supplementary volumes and has gained steadily in reputation and prestige, maintaining its high editorial standard. Therefore the announcement of a new edition of this great work is an event in the world of law books.

The purpose of the new edition was twofold. First, to collate the matter contained in the supplements (now almost equal in volume to that in the original work) under a single set of titles, with a single system of annotation and indexing, and eliminating all superseded, repealed or obsolete material, thus greatly simplifying the work of the investigator.

Second, profiting by an experience of fourteen years in publishing this work, to add many new features of value to the user and to make improvements in the form and arrangement which had from time to time recommended themselves to the publishers.

This has all been accomplished, and the result, the second edition of FEDERAL STATUTES ANNOTATED, a work which contains not only all the features which made the first edition so valuable, but many important new ones, is now offered to the public.