Reminiscences of an Old Georgia Lawyer: Judge Garnett Andrews

Chapter III.

Chapter III. Justice Courts.—The Young Lawyer’s Toughest Case—A Court broken up in a Row—Deliberations and Impetuosity—Miss Nancy Rumsey and the Irishman—Strange Names of Districts— Wolf Skin—The Lick—Dooly district.21 A young friend, formerly practicing law in Wilkes County, Georgia, rising to the dignity of editor of a newspaper, and seeming to have been hard run for matter, wrote the following amusing account of his “toughest law case.” With a hope of aiding him in his extremity, I contributed the three succeeding numbers to his paper; and as they relate to trials in the courts of the Justice of the Peace,22 in Georgia, they find their appropriate place in this chapter: Our Toughest Law Case The opening of a legal career is usually approbation of severe trial. The “young lawyer” suffers anxieties, secret humiliation and anguish, of which the outside world forms no conception; and for which an after life of success is scarcely a compensation, burdened, as it must be, with constant care and vigilance. In the Superior Courts, indeed, his way is smooth enough, except the troubles which necessarily arise from his own greenness and timidity; for there the presiding Judge will look with indulgence upon his youth, and remembering his own early trials, will carefully refrain from wounding his sensitive pride, and often protect his inexperience from the consequence of blindness or the superior skill of the hardened old brothers; while the latter old fellows themselves, are often disposed to treat him with consideration or even tenderness. But his natural enemy is the Justice of the Peace, and especially the country Justice. If opposed before one of these by an old lawyer, “His Honor,” in Reminiscences of an Old Georgia Lawyer [26] total ignorance of the really difficult questions which often arise before him, always follows implicitly the argument, or rather the directions, of the senior advocate, taking it for granted that he knows more about the law than the younger. If unopposed, the old Magistrate is almost sure to decide against the young lawyer, lest the bystanders might think he did not know as much law as the upstart boy, or that he had made His Honor change his opinion; for the harder the head the harder will he hold his point against the hardest logic. Indeed, the case often takes the turn of a fight between the young lawyer and Justice, instead of the plaintiff and defendant. Every lawyer has had his first experience of this sort. Ours was before a Georgia Justice—and here it is: A country schoolmaster sued one of his patrons for tuition of two children . The case was first tried before the Justice, without a jury, each party managing his own cause in propria personœ.23 Judgment for the defendant. Plaintiff appealed to a jury and came to town and employed us to fight his battle. We had just been admitted to the bar, and on the next Court day of the district, drove out with Stokes, our client, and arrived a little before old Crabman, the Squire. The Court was held in a little log school house, on the roadside, a few hundred yards from the residence of our Justice, who was a country farmer. Very soon we saw him coming down the road on foot, with his negro boy behind him, carrying a jug. The old codger had a fiery red face, rough iron gray hair, and was a self-willed, stormy-tempered man, wearing a green blanket overcoat and yellow plush cap pulled down over his ears. Our client had given mortal offence by appealing from his decision, and it was apparent that we had a hard day before us, when the old fellow passed through the crowd to the door, with a loud “good morning” to everybody but Stokes and the writer, at whom he glanced with angry contempt, as he entered the house. The crowd followed into the room, where the jug was deposited on a table in the centre of the floor, the cob-stopper drawn, and all present invited to take a pull, except poor Stokes and his lawyer, the old Squire concluding the ceremony with a fierce look at us over the jug handle, as the stuff mounted to his nose. Court was then solemnly opened, and ours, the great case of the day, soon reached and the jury sworn. The defendant was no where to be seen, and after proving our claim, and...