A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to the Specific Performance of Contracts (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to ...)
Excerpt from A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to the Specific Performance of Contracts
A long while ago the publishers of these pages entered into an engagement with a prominent member of the bar to write a treatise on the Specific Performance of Con tracts, but his subsequent call to a different field of labor compelled him to relinquish the undertaking, and the au thor then, by request, took it up. At that time this im portant subject had not been separately treated by any American writer; and, though it occupied a place in books on the general system'of Equity Jurisprudence, yet, to obtain detailed information in. Relation to it, resort was necessarily had to English works, which, of course, did not always present the law relating to the specific enforcement of contracts precisely as it is administered by the courts of this country. The reports of every State in the Union bear abundant testimony to the practical nature and fre quent recurrence between litigants of the topics herein dis cussed; and it is the object of the present volume to give the result of our legal decisions in connection with those of Great Britain in establishing rules governing such suits.
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A Treatise On the Law of Set-Off, Recoupment, and Counter Claim
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Thomas Whitney Waterman was the fourth of eight children. His paternal grandfather, David Waterman, was an ironmaster of Salisbury, Connecticut; his father, Thomas Glasby Waterman (1788 - 1862), graduated from Yale in 1806, studied law, and in 1813 arrived in Binghamton, N. Y. , where he married Pamela, daughter of Gen. Joshua Whitney, promoter for William Bingham in developing the town site. In 1822 Waterman was made district attorney, and in 1828 published The Justice's Manual. He sat in the Assembly in 1824 and in the state Senate, 1827-30, taking part in the preparation of The Revised Statutes of the State of New York. After 1831 he turned his attention to lumbering, and amassed a comfortable fortune.
Education
Thomas Whitney Waterman entered Yale in 1838.
Career
He was sent abroad for his health and traveled in England and on the Continent. Returning in 1844, he served an apprenticeship in a law office, was admitted to the bar in 1848, and commenced practice in New York City as an associate of his brother-in-law, Judge James W. White. In the following year he published A Treatise on the Civil Jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace (1849), a complete revision, rearrangement, and enlargement of the subject earlier treated by his father, to whom this volume was inscribed. In 1851 he published in three volumes The American Chancery Digest, including state and federal equity decisions, with an introductory sketch of equity courts and their jurisdiction. It made a favorable impression on his colleagues, and his professional standing was now deemed a sufficient guarantee of the accuracy of his writings. During the next nine years he edited an American edition (1851) of Joseph Henry Dart's Compendium of the Law and Practice of Vendors and Purchasers of Real Estate; a third edition of R. H. Eden's Compendium of the Law and Practice of Injunctions; two editions (1853, 1860) of J. F. Archbold's Complete Practical Treatise on Criminal Procedure, Pleading, and Evidence; a new edition (1853) of The Wisconsin and Iowa Justice, originally written by his younger brother, Joshua Waterman; a fourth edition (1854) of John Adams' Treatise on the Principles and Practice of the Action of Ejectment; a second edition (1855) of A Treatise on the Law of New Trials in Cases Civil and Criminal by David Graham, to which Waterman added two volumes; a fourth edition (1856) of William Paley's Treatise on the Law of Principal and Agent; and A Digest of the Reported Decisions of the Superior and of the Supreme Court of Connecticut (1858). His literary work was interrupted in 1861 by the illness of his father, whose death in January 1862 caused him to return to Binghamton to commence active practice, but the publication in 1865 of his American edition of John Tamlyn's Reports of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery marked the resumption of his lego-literary activities. This work was followed by A Treatise on the Law of Set-Off, Recoupment, and Counterclaim (1869), the success of which led the author to abandon practice once more; a second edition (1873) of 6 and 19 Wendell's Reports (two other volumes, 18 and 20, of these reports, containing Waterman's notes, were published in 1901); A Treatise on the Law of Trespass, which met hostile criticism from those members of the bar who held the law reports to be the only legitimate fountains of legal wisdom; A Digest of Decisions in Criminal Cases (1877); and A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to the Specific Performance of Contracts (1881). His last important work, A Treatise on the Law of Corporations, was published just before he suffered a stroke of paralysis from which he never fully recovered. He died in Binghamton at the age of seventy-seven.
Achievements
He is famous for such a works as A Treatise on the Law of Set-Off, Recoupment, and Counterclaim (1869), A Digest of Decisions in Criminal Cases (1877), A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to the Specific Performance of Contracts (1881) and others.
His writings were, for the most part, on phases of law which were rapidly changing, and with the appearance of later volumes of reports his digests were soon outdated; hence his work has not noticeably affected the thought and development of the law of later generations.
