Latest Important Cases*

Automobiles. See Patents. Banking. See Usury. Bankruptcy. State a "Person" under the Bankruptcy Act—Priority against Debtor's Estate. U. S. In the case of In re Western Implement Co.', 22 Am. B. R. 167 (D. C., Minn.), it was held that a state is a "person" within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Act, 1898, and where a debt due to a state is entitled to priority under its insolvency law, it is, under section 64b (5) of the Bankruptcy Act, entitled to priority against the debtor's estate in bankruptcy. Bill of Rights. Measurement of Arrested Person before Conviction—"Rogues' Gallery" Portraits— Rights of the Accused. Md. Where an injunction had been granted in the lower court restraining the police authori ties of Baltimore City from measuring and photographing, before conviction, a person arrested on a felony charge, and it was not directly charged that the police intended to put his photograph in their "rogues' gallery" or to distribute copies of it to the police of other cities unless the prisoner was convicted or became a fugitive from justice, the Court of Appeals of Maryland (Schmucker, J.), in Downs v. Swann (June, 1909, N. Y. Law Jour., Sept. 13, 1909), affirmed an order dissolving the injunction, and held:— "In our opinion the photographing and measuring of the appellant in the manner and for the purposes mentioned, and the use of his photograph and the record of his measure ment to the extent set forth in the answer by the police authorities of Baltimore City, would not constitute a violation of the per sonal liberty secured to him by the Constitu tion of the United States or of this state. . . . But we must not be understood by so doing to countenance the placing in the rogues' gallery of the photograph of any person, not a habitual criminal, who has been arrested, but not convicted, on a criminal charge, or the ♦Many of these decisions are not yet reported, and no citations can be given. Copies of the pamphlet Reporters containing full reports of such of them as are cited in the National Reporter System may be secured from the West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, at 25 cents each. In order ing, the title of the desired case should be given as well as the citation of volume and page of the Reporter in which it is printed.

publication under those circumstances of his Bertillon record." Copyright. Construction of Contract between Author and Publisher— Newspaper Not En titled to Book Rights without Express Author ity—Its Right to Determine Form of Copyright as Against Trespassers. U. S. Two federal courts in different jurisdictions took diametrically opposed views of the character of the copyright of the New York Times in Peary's story of his discovery of the North Pole in decisions rendered Sept. 11, one at New York, the other at Chicago. The contract of Commander Peary with the Times had contained the following provisions bearing upon the particular point on which Judge Hand and Judge Grosscup failed to agree:— "The Times is to have the sole rights to the news of the discovery, and is to have the exclusive right of its publication in all parts of the world. ... I am free to sell the maga zine and book rights to my best advantage." Judge Learned Hand, in the United States District Court for the southern district of New York, dissolved the injunction he had granted the Times Sept. 9 restraining the New York Sun and the New York World from reprinting Commander Peary's copy righted despatches to the Times describing the discovery of the North Pole. The Court remarked that had the complainants received the right from Lieut. Peary to publish the story of the discovery in pamphlet form, the copyright would have been perfected by their compliance with the statute requirements with regard to the copyright of pamphlets. "The contract gave to them, however, only the right to a news publication of the story, which I understand to mean that they meant to publish it in what fairly came within the description of being a newspaper. If so, the antecedent publication of a pamphlet was not the publication which the statute requires, for that must be a publication by the pro prietor." The opposite result was reached in the deci sion of Judge Peter S. Grosscup of the United States Circuit Court, at Chicago, in the suit brought by the Chicago Tribune for a similar injunction against four Chicago newspapers.