This litigation resulted in a victory for Mr. O'Conor and his associates. In July, 1864, Judge Nelson wrote a short opinion dealing with contractual rights and gave judgment for The Hartford Carpet Company. (Case No. 8569, 15 Federal Cases, page 1021, 2 Fisher's Patent Cases, 472).
The Judges and counsel, with the juniors from the Boston and Hartford offices, dined together every day at the New Haven House, and a congenial company it was. Mr. O'Conor, when he was at liberty, would put on the back of his head the silk hat which he always wore and say: "Who's for a walk?" and go off on a tramp under the elms. He was a spare, active man, of nervous temperament and great vitality. In New York he lived at Fort Washington, on the Hudson, and used to rise early, walk to his club on Fifth Avenue, breakfast there and then go down to his office.
The keynote of Judge Curtis was serenity, that of Mr. O'Conor was intensity. Beginning to tread law at the age of sixteen, Mr. O'Conor fought his way to the lead, an achievement which no one who knows New York City will be disposed to underrate. In the fine old common law phrase, he "made war for his clients." He was tremendously combative within the rules of the game, and absolutely fearless and independent. His opinions were often extreme and sometimes eccentric. I heard him say at the New Haven House, in the middle of the War for the Union, to a man who asked for political advice: "Take the bull by the horns. Every dollar spent and every life lost in this War is just so much thrown into the great deep." It was like him to offer his professional services to Jefferson Davis in his evil day. He prophesied or hoped that "some future Tacitus" would arise to pronounce the verdict of history on Chief Justice Taney as ultimus Romanorum. There was a noble side to Mr. O'Conor's nature. With all his law he was an idealist. In accepting some now-forgotten nomination to the Presidency, he wrote this ringing sentence: "To spend in one's allotted place a blameless life of honest effort, and at its end to perish nobly contending in the Thermopylæ of an honest cause, has always been to me the perfection of a happy individual destiny." Let this be his epitaph.
It remained for Judge Curtis, a few years later, to perform a professional duty which made him for the second time a prominent figure in the law and politics of the country. This was his opening argument for the defense in the Impeachment Trial of President Johnson. In a private letter written during that trial, he said: "There is not a decent pretense that the President has committed an impeachable offense." Most intelligent persons will now agree with him. His argument is a masterpiece of luminous reasoning and exposition, and concludes with this grave warning:
"It must be unnecessary for me to say anything concerning the importance of this case, not only now, but in the future. It must be apparent to everyone in any way connected with or concerned in this trial that this is and will be the most conspicuous instance which ever has been or can ever be expected to be found of American justice or American injustice, of the justice which Mr. Burke says is the great standing policy of all civilized States, or of that injustice which is sure to be discovered and which makes even the wise man mad, and which, in the fixed and immutable order of God's providence, is certain to return to plague its inventors."
A landlord is held to be deprived of his property without due process of law by a statute giving the tenant the privilege of holding over at pleasure at expiration of his lease, in Hirsh v. Block, 267 Fed. 614, annotated in 11 A.L.R. 1238, on the constitutionality of rent laws.
(N. J. Supreme Court, Jan. 20, 1922).