The Case and Exceptions: Stories of Counsel and Clients

by Frederick Trevor Hill

Josiah Bateman had been a client of Mr. Paulding long before I was admitted to a partnership. His Will had been in our safe for fifteen years, but neither my partner nor I knew its terms, for the old man had drawn it up himself. “He guessed he knew enough law to give away his property,” he told us as we witnessed the instrument.

Mr. Bateman ought to have known some law. Certainly he had expended enough money in litigation to pay for a hundred legal educations. Indeed his genius for disputes would have made him an ideal client save for one fact—he seldom took the advice of his lawyers. It naturally followed that his success in the Courts was by no means encouraging. Whenever he won a suit he claimed all the credit, and if he lost, our responsibility was voiced by the loser in a tone only a little more offensive than his self-gratulation. People used to wonder how we got on with the man, but we were accustomed to his vagaries, and despite his declamations he paid handsomely and promptly for every service rendered.

As he grew older Mr. Bateman’s tendency to litigate increased tremendously and the Office Register coupled his name with every kind of law suit from a dispossess proceeding to a knotty problem in the law of nations.

Mr. Bateman had never married, and he never spoke of his relatives to anyone. Down-town New York knew him as a clear-headed, obstinate, hard-working, irascible merchant who had made a great deal of money. But there information stopped. His fortune was variously estimated from a million up to five millions—one guess being as good as another in the absence of any known facts.

So when the news came that Josiah Bateman was dead I think everybody connected with our firm, from the senior partner to the office boy, was curious to learn how the old man had left his money.

The news of his death did not reach us until a week after he had been buried. We were then advised by letter that he had been on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks and had become ill and died when far away from any town. The guides seem to have known nothing about him and he was buried at the nearest cemetery. No papers or documents were found upon the body, and it was not until a week after his funeral that a crumpled piece of paper was discovered in his game bag. This proved to be one of our letters to him and we were at once put in possession of the facts. At the same time we were informed that the body had been exhumed and positively identified by an old friend of our client. Mr. Paulding was away from Town on his vacation when the news came and in his absence the responsibility for proper action devolved upon me.

The letter announcing Mr. Bateman’s death arrived in the morning mail, but I was engaged in Court all day and it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening before I returned to the office. Letters and papers had accumulated on my desk during my absence, but I was too tired and hungry to attack the work they suggested, so dismissing the clerks for the night I sought out the nearest restaurant.

All thought of Bateman’s affairs had been crowded out by the events of the day, and it was not until I had finished my after-dinner cigar that they were recalled to me by seeing Mr. Bateman’s obituary printed in an evening paper.

It was the usual “boneyard” article which had doubtless been set up in the newspaper office years before. Any way, after reading three quarters of a column I learned nothing about the man I did not already know, and what I knew could have been condensed into a dozen lines. It set me thinking, however, about our queer old client. Perhaps his Will contained some directions for the disposition of his body which should govern my immediate instructions to the people in the Adirondacks. His end would have been lonely enough anywhere, but up there in the silent mountains, away from the city’s bustle and battle which he loved, death must have seemed fearful to that lonesome old man. Late as it was I determined to return to the office and look at Mr. Bateman’s Will.

I always carried a key to the front door of our office building, for no one slept on the premises and sometimes it was important to gain admission after the closing hour.