CASES ON BUSINESS LAW BY WILLIAM EVERETT BRITTON PROFESSOR OF LAW, INDIANA UNIVERSITY AND RALPH STANLEY BAUER ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS LAW ST. PAUL WEST PUBLISHING CO. 1922 PREFACE THIS Collection of cases is designed for the use of students in schools of commerce and business administration. The scope, content, and method of treatment of materials for such a course depends largely upon the ends sought to be accomplished thereby. If the acquisition of specific legal information were the chief goal toward which the nonprofessional law student were to direct his efforts, the treatment of the subject intended for his study would be extensive, perhaps, over the greater portion of the entire field of the law. On the other hand, if the chief end of such study were the adequate equipment of the student for acting as his own legal adviser, a complete course in a law school would be necessary. The ends to be attained from the study of law by this class of nonprofessional law students lies somewhere between these two extremes. The future business man may well obtain such a knowledge of law as will be of value to him in avoiding some litigation. From its study, he should be enabled to appreciate with greater certainty the time and the circumstances under which the guidance of competent counsel is needed, and his knowledge should constitute additional equipment for intelligent co-operation with counsel. As a student, irrespective of his future work, he may well be permitted to gain whatever of educational value there may be in the study and discussion of legal problems. As a citizen, he should know something of the nature and development of the methods by which organized society encourages initiative, controls human action, and advances individual and social interests through the administration of justice. An extensive treatment of law, it is believed, is not calculated to produce the best results. Some intensive work is indispensable, for otherwise some of the chief ends of the study are likely to be defeated. The materials placed in his hands and the nature of his study should. emphasize, upon the mind of one who spends but a short time in the study of law, the truth that he has surveyed but a limited portion of a broad field of study and that his observation thereof has not penetrated to any great depth. But this same material and his work upon it should, however, unmistakably reveal to the student some of the chief sources of controversy and litigation, and should impart to him a knowledge of the problems involved in the formulation and interpretation of legal principles and of the difficulty inherent in their application to the limitless variety of economic and social facts. The picture drawn cannot be complete, but it should be true as far as it moves within the range of vision. There exist just as strong reasons, therefore, for the belief that judicial decisions constitute the materials. best suited for conveying to the business student some definite notions. iii |