CASES ON BUSINESS LAW BAILMENTS AND CARRIERS, SECURITY RIGHTS BY RALPH STANLEY BAUER AND ESSEL RAY DILLAVOU ST. PAUL WEST PUBLISHING CO. 1925 PREFACE IT IS the purpose of the present volume to do for the study of other subjects of business law by students in colleges of commerce what has already been done in contracts, agency, negotiable instruments, sales, partnership, and corporations by Britton & Bauer's Cases on Business. Law. Since the publication of the latter work, the authors of the present work have successively worked at the development, at the University of Illinois, of a course that carries the same general type of treatment through all of the other important subjects of business law. The present book is the outgrowth of the development of that course. The success of the previous volume, and the popularity of the second course, have led the authors to believe that this book fills a need no less real than that supplied by the first volume. The subjects perhaps almost universally regarded as fundamental have been covered in the earlier volume, yet subjects of great practical importance are treated in this one. In fact, many good students have said that some of the most practical help that they have received from their work in business law. has come from this second course. As in the other volume, the arrangement and classification are, in the main, strictly legal. The experience of the authors in teaching the course has, however, made it clear to them that there is a decided advantage in abandoning this strictly legalistic arrangement in the treatment of those rights which have here been classed together in Part II as "Security Rights in Rem." This makes it easier to compare chattel mortgages with conditional sales, collateral pledges with chattel mortgages, and chattel mortgages with real estate mortgages, and to make any other comparisons of a like kind that may seem desirable. Part II, therefore, deviates somewhat from the general scheme of the book. Probably the business law subject that least adapts itself to a brief casebook treatment is real property. Of necessity, any treatment of that subject in such a book is sketchy and incomplete; but it is believed that much material of value is presented here under this subject. Probably in no subject has the problem of selection been so difficult, and probably in no subject must there be more of diversity of opinion as to the wisdom of any man or group of men in making selections covering only a small portion of one such volume. The material on real property is submitted, however, in the hope that, while it can give no student so nearly a complete view as he gets of some of the other subjects, it may nevertheless give many students a fair understanding of a few of the many legal pitfalls to be found in various dealings in real property, and that they may better understand the need of submitting property difficulties to lawyers trained and experienced in property law. (iii) In this volume, as in the earlier one, the authors have not shown a preference for leading cases, but have attempted to select, whenever possible, a good illustrative case, fairly recent, vibrant with the interesting life of the century, and often of the decade, in which we now live. There are included a few cases decided in 1925. It has been the experience of the authors and of many other teachers that undergraduate students do not always evince the same reverence for musty and timeworn cases as do their elders, and, as historical treatment is outside the purpose of this work, it is believed that ancient cases are of little value here. Recent cases, showing the present state of the law, would seem to be more important to the commerce student, who desires, above all, that which is practical and useful to-day. The dictionary of legal terms is a revision and enlargement of that appearing in Britton & Bauer's Cases. The authors express their sense of indebtedness to Cases on Suretyship, by Professor Hening, and Cases on Trade Regulation, by Professor Oliphant, from both of which they have used a number of cases. The authors are also indebted to Professor Harry D. Taft, of De Paul University, for suggestions on the arrangement of the chapters on Property. May 28, 1925. R. S. B. E. R. D. |