THE KNELL OF LEGAL CHICANERY.

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 146, 30 June 1883, Page 227

THE KNELL OF LEGAL CHICANERY.

The knell of legal chicanery is sounded in the measures now before Parliament. The practical common-sense of the Nineteenth Century recoils from the dusty and cob-webbed remnants of the Dark Ages. The progressive spirit of the age is grappling with the G-orgon of Norman dogLatin jargon, cumbrous and tedious formulas, ancient bogey paraphernalia, tortuous and torturous machinery, and all the complications of declarations, pleas, replications, rejoinders, surrejoinders, rebutters, sur-rebuttera, demurrers, general demurrers, special demurrers, etc., etc., ad lib., which bring grist to the mill of the low legal practitioner, but delay and defeat justice, convert lawyers into cormorants and harpies, and law into a bottomless pit. Sir G-eorge Grey, Mr j Connoly, and Mr Bryce having little in common politically, have put their foot on the legal monster, and are each striving towards the same laudable end — simplication and cheapening of law, and speedier justice. *.

It; was one of the points in Magna Charta that justice should not be sold to any man or justice denied to any man. But in New Zealand the Courts have been converted mainly into machines for the collection of Judicial Eevenue, justice has been gauged by the depths of clients' pockets, or the extent of their bank credits, and the law has been the pasture-ground of lawyers. Lawyers frame the laws, lawyers in Parliament manipulate them to their own profit and advantage, so-called "governing families" (save the mark),' get their sons crammed for the bar, and make them the instruments of their cupidity, chicanery, and oppression.

~*_ A contemporary which is the organ of wealth and monopoly sneered the other day at the rising young men in the Colony who are seeking fry patient and persovering study to qualify themselves for the legal profession. It was only natural that a newspaper which prostitutes itself before the Mammon of hypocrisy and cant should affect contempt for the poor man of brains, who, under all the disadvantages of social inequality, is striving to break down a hoary monopoly, and to win his way in the battle of life against nincompoops who are favoured by fortuitous circumstances. There is no danger that the phrase, " learned friend," will sink into greater disrepute than it stands in now by clearing away old lumber, obsolete jargon and rubbish, selfish, impediments to advancement, and leaving the avenue open to men of intellect and worth. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to hear two shallow, ill-educated hobbledehoys, who have passed a flukey examination by a process of cramming, addressing each other as "my. learned friend." It is like two Parliamentary logrollers engaged in a political swindle calling one another "my honourable friend," or a Taranaki major and a Militia colonel who hardly know their facings, ex-changing-such empty- courtesies as "my honourable and gallant friend."

. . . — . Competition is the soul of business. Competition cannot injure any- useful profession. It can only bring the best man to the front, as a limited degree of competition in the legal profession does now. It is only the incompetent and worthless, the unscrupulous and dishonest, who cry out, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" Only the hangers-on, and duffers of the craft fear fair competition. They are the worms and maggots of the law, bred in the bruised and rotten parts, and nourished in the same corruption that pro-duced-them. They feed on the dry bones of ancient abuses, and anomalies, : disentombed from the foul and reeking graveyards of antiquity. They are the Jerry Crunchers of the legal profession. Destitute alike of brains and principle, they fatten on the refuse and garbage of intellectual and physical pi'ogression. Even leading barristers often resemble some clever Kudarz, who conjures with the hocus-pocus of the law, and wins applause and wealth by tricks of sleight of hand.

— «. . There are things done in the green leaf of the legal profession m this Colony, which, in any other country in the world, would long ere this have evoked a storm of popular indignation, and an irresistible clamour for a thorough cleansing of the Augean stable. We have held off our hands from many a legal scandal that would have caused the reader's hair to stand on end, and that for many reasons. First, because in the present condition of the Libel Law, any journalist who dares the task of reforming longstanding public abuses must face a lynx-eyed, legal phalanx, hungry for the spoils of warfare, learned in the stratagems and tactics of their peculiar mode of fighting, having no commissariat of their own, subsisting on that of the enemy, digging pitfalls in their front, or, unlika the old gladiators in the Colosseum, having overseers of their own appointment who judge the battle in their interest. Secondly, because we should involve innocent persons in the general odium ; and thirdly, because we have no desire to bring discredit on a profession which in itself is honourable. It is not the profession itself that we condemn, but some of its members who degra.de and disgrace it.

,1, • ♦ ■ The Law Society lately put itself in a ridiculous position by presuming to review the utterances' of a Judge on the Bench. Discovering its powerlessness in time, it retreated from a false position, and fell back tipon a subterfuge. :It then claimed only the right to review the conduct of its own members. But in that review it adroitly enough contrived to leave its sting behind, by means of a well-organised agitation among its associate branches. It is to be regretted thai; the' LawSociety does not take the old Scriptural text as its guide, and pull bi\t the mote from its own eye before 'it ' looks at the beam in its brother's. If it claims the right to pronounce judgment on' the acts of ii 9 own members, then; in heaven's name, why does it flinch its duty. Here, for instance are two gross legal

scaridais which .might form the 7 subject of an in■<;qurrjv, Spmß,yeara;ago att'tt we may call' A:, went lo [America, leaving the deeds of certain properpes.wliich he,had acquired in the City of Auckland in charge; of his lawyer .B. After an absence of. some years, and having married and settled down in Philadelphia, he learned through his brother, who remained m Auckland, that an attempt had been/made. to, sell the properties by certain persons who professed to have acquired their title from B. A. protest <waa entered against the prpposed;sale, but despite- that it was proceeded with. The next step was to apply to the Kegistrar to register the title to the property under the Land Transfer Act, but this step was frustrated by a caveat lodged by the I brother of the absent owner.

In lodging this cat eat the brother backed his objection with, certain documents, one of which was a letter sent to the owner in America, by 8., his lawyer, virtually acknowledging that he had no authority to sell and asking for a power o£ attorney. There was also an affidavit sworn before a U.S. judge stating that A., the owner, never signed any documents transferring or giving any lien upon the land, had never given B. or any other lawyer authority to raise money upon the land, never signed any conveyance, and did not " owe one cent, to any man in Auckland." ♦..

B.s version of the affair is that the deeds were stolen out of his box, and that he was made drunk with champagne by two other lawyers and induced to sign a conveyance of some of the properties, for which he received an advance of £40. Subsequently, the two called on him again, and pressed him to sign a second conveyance. He demurred, and begged time to peruse the document, but -was told that the first deed was informal, and that the second wa3 almost an exact copy of it, with some necessary trifling alterations. They also urged him to lunch with them, and peruse the document afterwards, but having attached his signature, and received a further advance, he never saw the deed again. He has since discovered that i t conveyed away the whole of the properties to 0. and D., the two other lawyers. The properties are " very valuable, and £50, the amount received by 8., does not amount to a twentieth- of their value. B. fully realises the serious position in which he stands, inasmuch a3 that the owner of the properties is now on his way to New Zealand to assert his rights, but Bavers that his accomplices in the.fraud were also cognizant of it. We have copies of all the documents, and the names of all the persons concerned, but, for the present, await further developments. The probability, however, is that on A.'s arrival, this gros3 scandal will be hushed up.

. -». I A more recent, though not so flagrant case, came to our knowledge the other day. , A. has a clienc who owes him money for fees. 8., another lawyer, sues A.'s client on behalf of C. A. tempts B. to refrain from execution for a fortnight by confessing judgment on behalf of his client, holding out a hope to B. that a settlement may be come to during the interval. But the day after the confession of judgment A. files a bill of sale on the goods of his own client, given in satisfaction of his own claim for fees, by which B.s remedy is defeated. These are only two instances amongst many that might be cited of the necessity for some reformation, and we trust that the steps now being taken in Parliament may have that effect.