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The Chairman addressing the meeting said :
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
As you all know, the absence of the President
from our Meeting to-day is due to his indisposition.
For some weeks past he has, on doctor's orders,
been unable to carry out his presidential duties or
in fact attend to any business, but I am very glad
to be able to tell you that his enforced period of rest
has greatly improved his health, so much so that he
had hopes of being here to-day but his medical
advisers persuaded him that it would be better that
he should be fully recovered before resuming his
onerous duties.
I am quite sure that I am voicing
the feelings of everybody here present when
I
suggest that from this Meeting a message should
go to the President assuring him of our very genuine
good wishes for a speedy recovery.
As his deputy it is my privilege to act as your
Chairman to-day, and on his behalf I welcome you
to this our half-yearly Meeting. A well-attended
half-yearly Meeting is a matter which your Council
looks upon with satisfaction as evidence of the
interest taken by the Members in the work of the
Society.
It is with genuine regret that I have to record the
deaths of the following members who have died
since our last General Meeting in November :
Mr. Joseph Kett-O'Shea, Mr. W. Gordon Bradley
(a former President of the Society), Mr. George
Carr-Lett, Mr. Arthur G. Joyce, Mr. George F.
Montgomery, Mr. William S. Collis, Mr. Frederick
H. Hall, Mr. Henry G. Morris, Mr. William B.
Scott, Mr. James W. Lane, Mr. John Bristow, Mr.
Eugene F. Collins (a former Vice-President of the
Society), Mr. Charles J. Spain, Mr. John Wray, Mr.
Robert C. Bathurst, and to their relatives we tender
our sympathy.
In the past six months the Council and its Com–
mittees have continued to pursue with unabated
vigour their work on behalf of the profession.
A matter which has occupied a considerable
amount of their attention has been the question of
increasing the remuneration of the profession, and
it is hardly necessary for me to remind you that,
apart from particular scales of remuneration which
came into existence for the first time since then,
no increase in costs has been granted to solicitors
for almost thirty years. When any application for
a general increase has to be made it means that
representations have to be made to no less than six
different bodies, namely, the Committee appointed
under
the Solicitors Remuneration Act of 1881,
the Superior Court Rules Committee, the Land
Registry,
the Land Commission, Circuit Court
Rules Committee and the District Court Rules
Committee, and this fact alone makes it difficult
for the Council to obtain a uniform ruling on the
questions arising. As you know, increases have
been obtained from
the Superior Court Rules
Committee in the matter of Supreme Court and
High Court Costs and also from the Land Registry
and Land Commission and are now in force. The
Committee appointed under the Solicitors
Re–
muneration Act of 1881 have made their Ruling
which, in accordance with the regulations made
under the Act, have been sent for your Council's
observations and these have been duly furnished
to the Committee, and it is anticipated that the final
ruling of the Committee will be available very
shortly.
In regard to the Council's application for
increased remuneration in the Circuit Court the
matter has been the subject of a number of Meetings,
of a Special Committee set up by the Council to
deal exclusively with this subject, and having regard
to the fact that there are so many different scales
applicable and that it has been found in practice
that very often different rulings are given by different
County Registrars on the interpretation of the
present scales, the broadest possible representation
of the various Circuits was sought on this Com–
mittee, and the Council asked a number of Solicitors,
outside the Council, for their advice and assistance.
I would like to praise the really hard work which
they have done and are doing on this Committee.
The fruits of their labours, which include the
examination in detail of all existing scales of Costs
and the examination of statistics bearing on the
business of the Court, will shortly go back to the
Circuit Court Rules Committee for further dis–
cussion, and I can assure you that every reasonable
step is being taken to bring this matter to a satis–
factory conclusion at the earliest possible moment.
We have found, when making applications for
increases in remuneration in connection with litiga–
tion, that there is a well-founded desire on the part
of each Rule-making Committee to keep the cost
of such litigation as low as is practicably possible
with this desirable object we have no quarrel, but
we do feel that in the vast majority of cases the
remuneration of a solicitor is only a comparatively
small item in the total expense of any case, and it is
certainly a fact that in Circuit Court litigation
throughout the Provinces the cost of litigation is
very often greatly increased by the amount of
witnesses' expenses which are allowed. Due to
transport difficulties over the last number of years
and to the present-day tendency to employ expert
witnesses much more frequently than in the past
such expenses have tended to increase ;
this is no
doubt inevitable, but the fact that such expenses
appear as part of the account furnished by a solicitor
is no good reason why it should be suggested that
a solicitor's remuneration should be reduced or