Mr. Shank's amendment being seconded, the president announces that it requires a division of Mr. Humphries' motion, and the substitute will go for that part of it which directed that copies be sent to our representatives in congress, leaving stand alone that part of the motion which went to the adoption of the report.

MR. HUMPHRIES-I think the whole report should be sent to the

members of congress. While the learned gentleman was reading this report it occurred to me it was the best argument that could be made, and the report should be taken altogether as the sense of this meeting, and the members of congress will take it up and act accordingly, and I think the whole report should be sent to them. The part that refers to appeals applies with equal force to the federal practice. All those technical points are made in the federal courts. In a case that went from this court involving a hundred thousand dollars the case was dismissed in the court of appeals because the record did not have upon it the words "filed by the clerk." That is known as the "Phinney case." The clerk certified to the record here and he certified to the bond and the approval of it, and yet when it went down to the court of appeals it was dismissed because the file mark was not placed on the record, and that is as technical as can be. And the same thing occurs in notices of appeal and in the case of an appeal to the court of appeals if the notice is not served upon every party that is named in the record, then they dismiss them. It applies with all its force to the federal practice, and there is no reason why we should not have the federal practice simplified as well as the state practice on appeals. Now the question comes up, "all technicalities should be disregarded." The Seattle Bar Association understood that that meant what it said, that all formal matters which did not go to defeat the merits of the case should be disregarded, but the supreme court says it didn't mean that, and that when a certain statement of facts was gotten up over at Spokane in a certain case and a very able lawyer started for the court house with that statement of facts and met the opposing attorney upon the road, he gave him a copy of it, and he got him to acknowledge service and carried it up and laid it down there I think some fifteen or twenty minutes difference in the time occurred the supreme court struck out that statement of facts because it was not filed before it was served; and the same

thing has occurred in the supreme court and the other courts, and I think the whole report should go. substitute upon the table.

Therefore, I move to lay the

MR. DONWORTH-I do not rise to discuss the motion now before the Association, but to make a remark or two in line with the suggestions made by the gentleman from Tacoma- that is, on the question of taking appeals. I think that most of the members of this Association, if they were asked to pass upon the motions to dismiss that have been granted by the supreme court, would have granted them. I think the fault is with the legislature and not with the court. I do not think it is a technicality when you try to get a man into the superior court if you fail to serve a summons upon him. I do not think it could be said that the dismissing of an action because there was no service would be considered a technicality in the superior court, and I do not think it is a technicality in the supreme court. The law says that the supreme court shall disregard technicalities in all cases removed to that court, but if a case is not removed to it, how can they disregard a technicality? The difficulty of getting a case into the supreme court, particularly if it is an important case and many parties have appeared, is something that we are all aware of. We go about the taking of an appeal with fear and trembling, and if we have won a case and it is appealed on us, instead of preparing a brief upon the merits we consider it rank negligence on our part if we do not search the record for some omission and make a motion to dismiss based upon that, and if we fail to do that and file a brief on the merits, we should consider we do not do our duty to our clients. Now in the case of appeals from a justice of the peace to the superior court, the law has been provident enough to say that if the bond filed is not the right kind of a bond the appeal shall not be dismissed if the appellant shall within the time allowed by the court file a good bond. Now, if the legislature has been careful enough to give us that chance in the case of damage to a cow or appeal for the sum of ten dollars, it ought to be kind enough to give us that chance in a case involving a hundred thousand dollars. I think the law should provide when a motion to dismiss an appeal is made on the ground of a defective bond, the party should have the right within the time limited to file a new bond. I further think that where a

motion to dismiss an appeal is made on the ground that there has not been service upon all the parties, if the time for the taking of an appeal has expired, and no other appeal has been taken, the court should retain jurisdiction of the case so far as concerns the parties served and decide the case as to them, if it can be done, reserving or saving the rights of parties not before the court. We have seen cases dismissed where the time for taking an appeal has expired and there has been an omission to serve parties whose interest in the case is infinitesimal or because they might have taken an appeal if they had been served in other words, the rule has been applied where the reason for the rule failed, and I think the supreme court has decided right in these cases. The fact is that there is hardly a lawyer at the bar that would not be willing in an important case to take all the steps and do all the work that he thinks the law requires him to do, and then pay an insurance corporation or company that would do that one hundred to five hundred dollars to insure him that his case is in the supreme court.

MR. MCGILVRA-I did not intend to say anything on this motion, and I only rise now for the purpose of expressing my opinion that the resolution ought to be passed in the shape in which it was originally made. Perhaps I should not have arisen to say that if my friend Don worth had not undertaken to defend the practice of the supreme court in dismissing the cases here. The proposition of dismissing cases in the supreme court of this state or in the supreme court of the United States, upon a statute such as ours, requiring the filing of the bill of exceptions or statement of factsthat it should be filed and then served, and that it was not filed and served when the filing and service was the same day and the same hour of the day, because, forsooth, it was proved before the supreme court that it was actually served a minute or ten minutes before it was filed, when all was one act, ignoring that old principle of law that any part of the day, any time in the day when an act is required to be done, is a compliance with the law. I do not believe that this Bar Association can go too far in discouraging the disposition of cases in any court, state or federal, upon mere technicalities. This report embraces more than this; it embraces the subject of receivers, and perhaps that is the most important feature of it, and in my opinion the courts have not gone so far astray in

any other matter connected with our jurisprudence, both federal and state, as they have in the appointment of receivers. It is true, as stated in this report, that ten years ago, perhaps less time than that, the appointment of receivers was only a casual and an occasional incident connected with litigation, and it was not the practice in those days to continue the business of the individual, the copartnership or the corporation owning property that the receiver was appointed to take charge of. Now it is the common practice, not only in the matter of small businesses and corporations, but in the matter of large corporations, for the courts to take these cor. porations in hand when they become insolvent or fraudulent and run the business for the corporations and as a rule for the benefit of the corporations. Now this may be a slight digression, but it is all embraced in the proposition of this report. This is not the first time, and it will not be the last time, if I shall have occasion, when I shall enter my protest against this vicious practice, as it seems to me, of the indiscriminate appointment of receivers. If you undertake to appoint a committee to make a special recommendation, it seems to me you will make a mistake; and this report should not be divided up at all, and if we are going to do anything at all about it, let us send the whole thing.

THE PRESIDENT-The motion is to lay Mr. Shank's substitute, which was, that the committee draft a proposed resolution referring the entire report and submitting that instead of the report itself, upon the table.

The motion was put and carried.

MR. GAY-I do not propose to discuss the matter of what shall be done with this report. I think that most of the bar will agree that it should contain more than it does. As I understood it, the purpose of this committee was to suggest something along the lines which would simplify the procedure of practice to-day in this state, and possibly the federal court. I do not believe there is an attorney now in practice but what has discovered that a large amount of his income goes to office expenses by way of keeping stenographers for that which ought to be eliminated from our practice. We have drifted into a habit in some way or other, and the courts apparently construe the practice act to be, particularly in equity cases, so called the foreclosure of mortgages-that

we must first have a long complaint, and then have it traversed by answer, reply, etc.; after issues are finally made up, that there must be long findings, and after that there must be a long decree, and all of these matters, which ought practically to be very much simplified, it seems to me. Now, the findings of fact practically in our practice are so long that they recite every word or more than is originally conveyed in the original complaint, and these are never recorded in any book, but they are pigeon-holed at the court house; but nevertheless it takes stenographers to make them. Not long ago I saw a decree in a simple foreclosure of mortgage, which was left down in our office, that had sixteen pages in it, and a few days later I saw in the equity department of our court a decree in the foreclosure of liens or mortgage, something of that kind, that had thirty-two pages, and I never have been able to see what particular function the so-called findings of fact served. If it happens to be a trial by jury, a jury will go out and they will find for the plaintiff or defendant, and if they find for the plaintiff it is generally conceded that they have found facts as pleaded in the complaint, and upon that simple little, short verdict we can draw a decree which will probably take a page, and we think we have a legal procedure and a legal judgment and a legal decree. But we have drifted into this practice that has been made so voluminous and expensive.

JUDGE W. H. MOORE-I did not intend to say anything with reference to this matter, but so much has been said relating to receiverships, and the report mentions the classes of cases in which receivers have been appointed, and that the appointment of such receivers has been sanctioned by so high a court as the supreme court of the United States, and the running of businesses has been sanctioned by that court, that I will state my experience in the six months I have presided over the equity and probate department of the superior court of King county. I went upon the bench and found that there were receivers of everything, from hotels to shingle mills, and they were all running. I was called upon to run, not the shoe business of a corporation, but the shoe business of an individual against whom there was no judgment. I was called upon to run a tin shop, hardware stores and divers and sundry shingle mills and coal mines, millinery stores and every