Chapter 368, which owes its paternity to my indefatigable, versatile and indispensable friend, Mr. Henry A. Forster, authorizes the Court, upon the determination of a motion, to enter its own short form of order either in the form of a typewritten or rubber stamp endorsement upon the moving papers. That is the English method; or in a printed. form as the orders of the Appellate Division and Court of Appeals. It permits, however, application for the long, archaic recitative 119th Psalm order if anybody insists upon a return to the former semi-barbaric practice. Chapter 290 also owes its paternity to Mr. Forster, and excited great ridicule when it first went into effect in this county, but I think every lawyer who uses the system in his own office will approve of the modern index flat filing system. This statute provides that a number shall be given to the summoms or original process, which shall be filed in an action or special proceeding within three days. after its service; that every fileable paper thereafter served shall have the same number with a directory provision that it shall be filed with or mailed to the clerk within one day after its service (meaning if it is served on more than one person, one day after such service is complete); when so filed all papers shall be chronologically entered in the current docket book on a page bearing the same number; each judgment docket shall have a modern alphabetical index; all papers shall be filed flat; all papers in any action or proceeding shall be filed together; and on the entry of judgment they shall be arranged chronologically. Under this system only one index will be necessary, instead of the fifteen indexes that were in use in New York county. The entries on the page or pages reserved for each case will give a chronological history of it from start to finish, and will enable the immediate production, without search, of any paper in that case required for examination. In an old or long-protracted New York county case, it sometimes is necessary, in order to find a needed paper, to search through all of the fifteen separate indexes for each business day of each year of the pendency of the case. Even after this laborious search, it may not be found, for there are many misnomers, mistakes and omissions. Moreover, where papers in the same action or proceeding are filed in fifty or more separate files or bundles as frequently has happened, important papers were mislaid, stolen, altered or mutilated. We commend that system in every County in the State. Your committee have decided to recommend the bill proposed by the American Bar Association at its last meeting, in Boston, relative to foreign wills, adopted by the States of Massachusetts, Wisconsin, North Dakota and others. I will read it: "A last Will and Testament executed without this State in the mode prescribed by the law, either of the place where executed, or of the testator's domicile, shall be deemed to be legally executed, and shall be of the same force and effect as if executed in the mode prescribed by the laws of this State, provided that said last Will and Testament is in writing and subscribed by the testator." Every practicing lawyer some time during the course of his professional career has a case presented to him of a testator dying in a foreign state, I do not mean a foreign country, although a foreign country comes within the description of a foreign state, and if this act be adopted by this State, it will do away with the embarrassments which have followed the execution of wills sometimes most imperfectly executed. Your committee are of the opinion that the Code of Civil Procedure should be amended so as to provide that a judgment in equity cases may be personally served without the State, upon a party to the action, with the same force and effect as though served within the State. A judgment in a common law action can now be served without the State, but, by a singular anomaly, an equity judgment is without efficacy if thus served. The result is many a defendant steps across the Hudson River to New Jersey, or across the boundary line to Connecticut, or Pennsylvania, or elsewhere, and you are without power to serve your judgment and make it efficacious. Our attention was called by the leading silversmiths, goldsmiths and jewelers in this country, and by some of the most prominent bankers of this State, to a grievous abuse in the change of names. As the law now stands, a man can file a petition at Special Term asking to have his name changed to any name that he may select, and an order is granted as a matter of course. The statute provides that there shall be one publication, then the order takes effect. We have given a few names taken at random from the last report of the Secretary of State as to such changes, and you will see the importance of some reform. What your committee proposes, without attaching any sinister intent to any of these changes, is that we be authorized to frame and present, at the next annual meeting, a bill which shall tend to guard against the trouble which sometimes arises. A matter was called to our attention this morning by an eminent lawyer who writes in regard to section 830 of the Code of Civil Procedure. We have not considered this, and we submit it without recommendation. The following is the report of the Committee on Law Reform: REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LAW REFORM To the New York State Bar Association: Gentlemen, your Committee upon Law Reform submits the following report: Continuing the policy pursued during the year 1910, it has consulted and co-operated with the Law Reform Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, experience having demonstrated that better results followed the co-operation of the two Associations than if either separately proposed to the Legislature measures of law reform. Seventeen bills recommended by the two Associations, designed to simplify the procedure, were passed by the Legislature and became laws. The more important of them are these: I DOUBLE TRIAL IN EJECTMENT ABOLISHED Chapter 509, Laws of 1911, abolishes the former statutory double trial and the discretionary third trial in ejectment. At common law judgment in ejectment was not res adjudicata. Until the enactment of the revised statutes an unlimited number of ejectments might be brought, in which the title or right of possession might be retried without limit. The revised statutes in effect prohibited the bringing of new ejectments for the same cause, but in lieu thereof gave either party an absolute right to one new trial and the discretionary privilege of a second new trial, each upon payment of costs and damages other than mesne profits. Under modern conditions, resources and litigiousness instead of merits, had become the determining factor in many ejectments. The action had become so burdensome that the Courts were astute to evade its abuses wherever possible. II DEMURRER BILL IN PRINCIPLE ADOPTED BY COURTS The First Department, by a vote of four to one, now holds that all demurrers are triable on motion, and that only an order need be entered upon demurrer; no decision or interlocutory judgment being necessary. III SATISFACTION OF MORTGAGE BY DEPOSIT Chapter 574, Laws of 1911, provides for the satisfaction and discharge of a mortgage upon deposit of the amount due thereon in court; to cover cases of the mortgagee's incapacity or unwillingness to satisfy it, or his absence from the State. IV SATISFACTION OF JUDGMENTS BY DEPOSIT Chapter 599, Laws of 1911, provides for the satisfaction of a judgment upon the deposit of the amount due thereon with the clerk; to cover cases of the incapacity of the holder of a judgment, or his unwillingness to satisfy it, or of his absence from the State. V FOREIGN EXECUTORS MAY SUE OR BE SUED Chapter 631, Laws of 1911, authorizes a foreign executor or administrator to sue (upon giving security for costs and filing a copy of his letters) or to be sued in this State in like manner and under like restrictions as a nonresident might sue or be sued. This cures the long-existing technical distinction that while the Courts of this State |