The New Jersey Law Journal, Volume XLV, No. 2, February, 1922

THE New Jersey Law Journal
PUBLISHED MONTHLY
VOLUME XLV FEBRUARY, 1922 No. 2
SOME REMINISCENCES, MOSTLY LEGAL
BY HON. FREDERIC ADAMS, LOS ANGELES, CAL.
IV. Certain Courts and Lawyers.
Ever since my boyhood the drama of the courtroom has interested me more than the drama of the theatre. I well remember my introduction to litigated business. I was a youngster on a visit to Boston when some one took me to a Court where a patent case was on trial. I was duly impressed by the imposing personality of the Judge, but my attention was soon fixed by the witness on the stand, whom I happened to know, for my father had once introduced me to him. He was Professor James Jay Mapes, of Newark, New Jersey, a chemist and inventor, one of whose many activities was the manufacture of fertilizers. I had visited one of his factories, somewhere between Newark and Elizabeth, and was surprised to see him at Boston in the rôle of a mechanical expert in a patent case. As the examination carefully proceeded I concluded, with the rashness of inexperience, that the examiner was a very dull man, for he seemed so slow to get an idea. What I then mistook for dullness I now recognize as professional skill, employed by counsel to unfold to the Court and jury the details of a complex mechanism. I know now more about that case than I did then, for, rather to my surprise, I have recently found a report of it in the first volume of Fisher's Patent Cases, at page 108. The time was August, 1851, when I was not quite eleven years old. The courtroom was that of the Circuit Court of the United States for the First Circuit. Samuel Colt was plaintiff. The Massachusetts Arms Company was defendant. The counsel for the plaintiff were E. N. Dickerson, C. L. Woodbury and G. T. Curtis, and for the defendant R. A. Chapman, G. Ashmun and Rufus Choate, and the Judge was Mr. Justice Levi Woodbury of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was then testing the validity of the patent for the Colt revolver. The charge is reported in full. The verdict was for the plaintiff.