Sub-Enclosure to Enclosure 4.
Notes on the question of the Proposed Alterations in the Jury Bill.
The two lists enclosed with the letter dated 19th July, 1909, from the Chief Justice to His Excellency show that between the dates May, 1905, to May, 1909, only 17 cases have occurred where juries have been applied for, of which 13 have been granted and 4 refused.
On the face of it, it might appear therefore that there does not seem to be any very strong argument in favour of the alteration asked for by the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce.
A more careful consideration of the facts will, however, I consider demonstrate that such an impression, if conveyed by the Chief Justice's list, would be erroneous.
It will be noticed that the period covered by the Chief Justice's list is four years. In the first list the dates of the order of the actions are given, which run from 27th March, 1906, to 20th April, 1909, or a period of three years and one month.
No dates are given against the four cases in which a jury was refused but as a matter of fact one of these cases was heard in March, 1908, and the other three in August of the same year.
The second list, however, appears to be incomplete. Action No. 219 of 1907 heard in August, 1908, (Chu Tak Sang against the China Navigation Co., Ld., and Messrs. Butterfield and Swire) was originally entered by the Plaintiffs for hearing in the Original Jurisdiction and upon this an application was made by the defendants for a special jury; the counter-blast to this on the part of the Plaintiffs was to apply for the case to be transferred to the Admiralty Jurisdiction.
The writ should perhaps have been more properly applied for in the first instance in the Admiralty Jurisdiction, the case being one of salvage, but it appears to me that rightly speaking this case should have appeared in the