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Show THE READER'S COURTROOM Her Hail Was Her Business By Will Bernard, LL.B 1 Are a Girl's Parents Expected to Open Her Mail? An 18-y ear-old stenographer bought a skiing outfit on the instalment instal-ment plan, making the purchase in her own name. However, she was unable to keep up the payments. The company finally wrote her a nasty letter, practically accusing her of deliberate dishonesty. To the A carpenter fell down and broke his leg, and his wife called the family fam-ily doctor. Unfortunately, the doctor doc-tor happened to be in a big hurry on that particular day. He did such a bad job of setting the broken leg that it never did heal up properly. Later the carpenter sued the doctor for negligence. The doctor admitted ad-mitted he had been careless "just this once," but brought a host of witnesses to prove that ordinarily he was a first-class physician. However, the court held the doctor liable. Should a Juror Decide According to His Own Experience? A man suffered a hernia in a train accident and sued the railroad rail-road for damages. After a lengthy trial, the jury retired to begin deliberations. de-liberations. Everybody agreed that the man should get something but they couldn't get together on the amount. Finally one of the I tell vou (DflWJ young lady's chagrin, her parents opened the letter and read it before be-fore she came home from work. She was so embarrassed that she filed suit against the company for defaming her character. However, the court rejected her claim on the ground that the company had written writ-ten the letter to her alone not to anybody else. The judge said it wasn't to be expected that the parents par-ents of an 18-year-old girl "almost an adult" would open her maiJ without permission. A passenger train rolled into a depot and came to a gradual halt. As it did so, a 76-year-old man standing stand-ing by the exit lost his balance and fell against a railing. He got a bad gash on his head and later sued for damages. But the court decided that the man himself was at fault, for standing up too soon. The judge pointed out that, no matter mat-ter how carefully an engineer stops a train, anyone who is standing up will have a tendency to tip over because of the law of inertia. jurors stood up and said: "I've had a hernia for years, and I can tell you it's awful!" Quickly the jury decided on a inrge verdict. However, How-ever, when the judge learned what had happened in the jury room, he threw out the verdict and ordered a brand new trial. The judge said that a jury must make up its mind on the evidence brought out in open court, not on the personal experience ex-perience of individual jurors. |