Judge Greene Slaps Down Legal Nitpicking

The following is the full text of the decision of Judge Greene at Port Townsend, in the case of Jackman vs. O'Dunn, wherein he considers at length the enactment of the late Legislature amendatory of the exemption law. Defendants claim the exemption of certain property by virtue of section 1547 of our Code. Plaintiffs contend that the section has been so changed by our last Legislature that no exemption whatever can now be had. The change was supposedly wrought by an act approved November 1881. The new reading, if substituted for the entire section, would result in a senseless, qualifying clause, which would be in effect a repeal of the section. The legislature unmistakably declared its intention was to amend, not repeal. There can be no reasonable contention as to the intent of the legislature. Anybody of any sense, who is not a lawyer or Judge, can tell at a glance what that intent is. When a man becomes a lawyer he does not have to lose his wits, nor does a Judge have to be a fool. I desire never to be one of those Judges who, when they discover in legislative proceedings a clerical mistake, will push it to extremity and permit the awkwardness of a phrase to work ruin and demolition for the poor. Demurrer overruled.