Bardell v. Pickwick

by Percy Fitzgerald; Charles Dickens

Perker’s suspicions as to the Cognovit obtained by Dodson and Fogg were shrewd, and certain enough, though he could not have seen the document. The suspicions were well warranted by the state of the Law, which became an instrument in the hands of grasping attorneys. By it the client was made to sign an acknowledgment, and offering no defence to a supposed action,—say for costs—brought against him, Judgment was then marked.

This offered a great temptation to the unscrupulous. Mrs. Bardell, no doubt, signed with light heart, not knowing what she was doing, and being told that it was merely a matter of form. Various enactments attempted to protect the client—one being passed some four or five years before the trial Bardell v. Pickwick, requiring the Cognovit to be regularly filed within twenty-one days; more than ten years later it was required, that the client’s signing such a thing should have no force in Law, unless he was represented by another solicitor.

The matter, as we know, was compromised with Dodson and Fogg, so there was no need to scrutinize the Cognovit. No doubt Perker was enabled to put pressure on the firm by hinting at such proceedings.

The damages, £750, were certainly moderate, and would not have been reduced by the Court on an application to set them aside as “excessive.” The good woman was quite at her ease, being no doubt certain

that Mr. Pickwick, at last, must give in. She could even enjoy the society of her friends and make the celebrated junketting to the “Spaniards.” The firm took another view and grew tired of waiting; or they were sagacious enough to see that the arrest of their client was about the best method of putting pressure on Mr. Pickwick. In this connection, it may be noted that Jackson’s over zeal in the transaction might have led to an action against his employers; for he arrested not only Mrs. Bardell, but her friends, Mrs. Sanders and Mrs. Cluppins. The prison gates were actually shut on them. “Safe and sound,” said the Bailiff. “Here we are at last,” said Jackson, “all right and tight.”

True, Mrs. Bardell put under her hand in her appealing letter to Mr. Pickwick, that “this business was from the very first fomented and encouraged and brought about by these men,” but this is not much; for the view only occurs to her when her operations had completely failed and recoiled on her own head with such disastrous result. The firm’s business was to persuade her that she had a good case, and the Jury’s verdict proved that she had. Had Mr. Pickwick given in and paid, she would have had no scruples. One cannot, at the same time, but admire the ingenuity of the author, in bringing such a Nemesis on her. Dodson and Fogg, we are told, “continue in business from which they realise a large income, and in which they are universally considered among the sharpest of the sharp.”

At the last interview, at Perker’s, when the costs were paid, one might have expected Mr. Pickwick to behave with a certain disdainful dignity. He was beaten and had paid over the stakes, and could afford to treat his enemy with contempt. Not so. The partners held out the olive branch by alluding to the way they had passed by his unmannerly attacks on them. “I beg to assure you, sir, I bear you no ill will or vindictive feeling for

sentiments you thought proper to express of us in our office,” and the other partner said, “I hope you don’t think quite so ill of us, etc.” This was rather gentlemanly and becoming. One offered his hand. But Mr. Pickwick broke out in a perfect fury. They had assumed a tone of forgiveness which was “an excess of impudence.” He had been “the victim of their plots and conspiracies.” They had imprisoned and robbed him. It was “insolent familiarity.” At last he said, “You are a well-matched pair of mean, rascally, pettifogging robbers.” This sentence he repeated three times, and the words “Robbers” he shouted after them many times over the stairs.

Sharping attornies! Why, a real sharping firm would have forced from their client advances of fee, “cash out of pocket,” have made her give a Bill of Sale on her lease and goods, and have fairly stripped her of everything before the case began. Of the damages—had they got them—she would have seen but little.

The Cognovit that was extracted from Mrs. Bardell was an acknowledgement, as we have seen, which entitled them to enter up judgment just as if a trial had taken place. In the Oxford great Dictionary, it reads quaintly to find Mrs. Bardell’s cognovit quoted as an illustration of the legal meaning.