CHAPTER XXV.
COMPENSATION—NICE CALCULATIONS IN OLD DAYS—EXPERTS—LLOYD AND I.
As my business continued to increase, it took me more and more from the ordinary nisi prius, and kept me perpetually employed in special matters. I had a great many compensation cases, where houses, lands, and businesses had been taken for public or company purposes. They were interesting and by no means difficult, the great difficulty being to get the true value when you had, as I have known, a hundred thousand pounds asked on one side and ten thousand offered on the other.
Railway companies were especially plundered in the exorbitant valuation of lands, and therefore an advocate who could check the valuers by cross-examination was sought after. Juries were always liable to be imposed upon, and generally gave liberal compensation, altogether apart from the market value. Experts, such as land agents and surveyors, were always in request, and indeed these experts in value caused the most extravagant amounts to be awarded. Even the mean sum between highest and lowest was a monstrously unfair guide, for one old expert used to instruct his pupils that the only true principle in estimating value was to ask at least twice as much as the business or other property was worth, because, he said, the other side will be sure to try and cut you down one-half, and then probably offer to split the difference. If you accept that, you will of course get one-quarter more than you could by stating what you really wanted. No one could deal with the real value, because there was no such thing known in the Compensation Court.
On one occasion I was travelling north in connection with one of these cases, retained, as usual, on behalf of a railway company. In my judgment the claim would have been handsomely met by an award of £10,000, and that sum we were prepared to give.
On my way I observed in my carriage a gentleman who was very busy in making calculations on slips of paper, and every now and again mentioning the figures at which he had arrived—repeating them to himself. When we got to a station he threw away his paper, after tearing it up, and when we started commenced again, but at every stoppage on our journey he increased his amount. After we had travelled 250 miles, the property he was valuing had attained the handsome figure of £100,000.
He evidently had not observed me. I was very quiet, and well wrapped up. The next day, when he stepped into the witness-box he had not the least idea that I had been his fellow-traveller of the previous night. He was not very sharp except in the matter of figures; but his opinion, like that of all experts, was invincible. His name was Bunce.
"When did you view this property, Mr. Bunce? I understand you come from London."
"I saw it this morning, sir."
"Did you make any calculation as to its value before you saw it?"
This puzzled him, and he stared at me. It was a hard stare, but I held out.
He said, "No."
"Not when you were travelling? Did it not pass through your mind when you were in the train, for instance—'I wonder, now, what that property is worth?'"
"I dare say it did, sir."
"But don't dare say anything unless it's true."
"I did, then, run it over in my mind."
"And I dare say you made notes and can produce them. Did you make notes?" After a while I said, "I see you did. You may as well let me have them."
"I tore them up."
"Why? What became of the pieces?"
"I threw them away."
"Do you remember what price you had arrived at when you reached
Peterborough, for instance?"
The expert thought I was some one whom we never mention except when in a bad temper, and he was more and more puzzled when he found that at every stoppage I knew how much his price had increased.
As the case was tried by an arbitrator and not a jury, my task was easy, arbitrators not being so likely to be befooled as the other form of tribunal. This arbitrator, especially, knew the elasticity of an expert's opinion, and therefore I was not alarmed for my client. The amount was soon arrived at by reducing the sum claimed by no less than £90,000. Thus vanished the visionary claim and the expert. He evidently had not been trained by the cunning old surveyor whose experience taught him to be moderate, and ask only twice as much as you ought to get.
In another claim, which was no less than £10,000, the jury gave £300. This was a state of things that had to be stopped, and it could only be accomplished at that time by counsel who appeared on behalf of the companies.
Sir Henry Hunt was one of the best of arbitrators, and it was difficult to deceive him. It took a clever expert to convince him that a piece of land whose actual value would be £100 was worth £20,000.
Sir Henry once paid me a compliment—of course, I was not present.
"Hawkins," said he, "is the very best advocate of the day, and, strange to say, his initials are the same as mine. You may turn them upside down and they will still stand on their legs" (H.H.).
Sir Henry was sometimes a witness, and as such always dangerous to the side against whom he was called, because he was a judge of value and a man of honour.
One instance in which I took a somewhat novel course in demolishing a fictitious claim is, perhaps, worth while to relate, although so many years have passed since it occurred.
It was so far back as the time of the old Hungerford Market, which the railway company was taking for their present Charing Cross terminus. The question was as to the value of a business for the sale of medical appliances.
Mr. Lloyd, as usual, was for the business, while I appeared for the company. My excellent friend proceeded on the good old lines of compensation advocacy with the same comfortable routine that one plays the old family rubber of threepenny points. I occasionally finessed, however, and put my opponent off his play. He held good hands, but if I had an occasionally bad one, I sometimes managed to save the odd trick.
Lloyd had expatiated on the value of the situation, the highroad between Waterloo Station and the Strand, immense traffic and grand frontage. To prove all this he called a multitude of witnesses, who kissed the same book and swore the same thing almost in the same words. But to his great surprise I did not cross-examine. Lloyd was bewildered, and said I had admitted the value by not cross-examining, and he should not call any more witnesses.
I then addressed the jury, and said, "A multitude of witnesses may prove anything they like, but my friend has started with an entirely erroneous view of the situation. The compensation for disturbance of a business must depend a great deal on the nature of the business. If you can carry it on elsewhere with the same facility and profit, the compensation you are entitled to is very little. I will illustrate my meaning. Let us suppose that in this thoroughfare there is a good public-house—for such a business it would indeed be an excellent situation; you may easily imagine a couple of burly farmers coming up from Farnham or Windlesham to the Cattle Show, and walking over the bridge, hot and thirsty. 'Hallo!' says one; 'I say, Jim, here's a nice public; what d'ye say to goin' in and havin' a glass o' bitter? It's a goodish pull over this 'ere bridge."
"'With all my heart,' says Jim; and in they go.
"There you see the advantage of being on the highroad. But now, let us see these two stalwart farmers coming along, and—instead of the handsome public and the bitter ale there is this shop, where they sell medical arrangements—can you imagine one of them saying to the other, 'I say, Jim, here's a very nice medical shop; what d'ye say to going in and having a truss?'"
The argument considerably reduced the compensation, but what it lacked in money the claimant got in laughter.
Sometimes I led a witness who was an expert valuer for a claimant to such a gross exaggeration of the value of a business as to stamp the claim with fraud, and so destroy his evidence altogether.
Sir Henry Hunt used to nod with apparent approval at every piece of evidence which showed any kind of exaggeration, but every nod was worth, as a rule, a handsome reduction to the other side.
I shall never forget an attorney's face who, having been offered £10,000 for a property, stood out for £13,000.
It was a claim by a poulterers' company for eight houses that were taken by a railway company. I relied entirely on my speech, as I often did, because the threadbare cross-examinations were almost, by this time, things of course, as were the figures themselves mere results of true calculations on false bases.
This attorney, who had, perhaps, never had a compensation case before, was quite a great man, and took the arbitrator's assenting nods as so much cash down.
So encouraged, indeed, was he that he became almost impudent to me, and gave me no little annoyance by his impertinent asides. At last I looked at him good-humouredly, and politely requested him, as though he were the court itself, to suspend his judgment while I had the honour of addressing the arbitrator for twenty minutes, "at the end of which time I promise to make you, sir," said I, "the most miserable man in existence."
I was supported in this appeal by the arbitrator, who hoped he would not interrupt Mr. Hawkins.
As I proceeded the attorney fidgeted, puffed out his cheeks, blew out his breath, twirled his thumbs as I twirled his figures, and grated his teeth as he looked at me sideways, while I concluded a little peroration I had got up for him, which was merely to this effect, that if railway companies yielded to such extortionate demands as were made by this attorney on behalf of the poulterers' company, they would not leave their shareholders a feather to fly with.
The attorney looked very much like moulting himself, and the end of it was that he got two thousand pounds less than we had offered him in the morning, and consequently had to pay all the costs.
As I have stated, John Horatio Lloyd was my principal opponent in these great public works cases, and I remember him with every feeling of respect. He was an advocate whom no opponent could treat lightly, and was uniformly kind and agreeable.
Of course I had a very large experience in those times—I suppose, without vanity, I may say the very largest. I was retained to assess compensation for the immense blocks of buildings acquired for the space now occupied by the Law Courts. In the very early cases the law. officers of the Crown were concerned, but after that the whole of the business was entrusted to my care, although for reasons best known to themselves the Commissioners declined to send me a general retainer, which would have been one small sum for the whole, but gave instead a special retainer on every case. If my memory serves me, on one occasion I had ninety-four of these special retainers delivered at my chambers. This was in consequence of their refusing to retain me generally for the whole, which would have been a nominal fee of five guineas.