Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1912 — JUDGE BERRY DECLINES TO SIT [ARTICLE]

JUDGE BERRY DECLINES TO SIT

Further In Borntrager Ditch Case Because of other Duties. GOES OVER DNTIL APRIL TERM Term of Court, When Effort Will Be Made to Get Another Judge —Governor May Have to Appoint. Special Judge Berry of Fowler, appointed by Judge Hanley to hear the Iroquois ditch remonstrance case, came over and took up the hearing Thursday, the date adjourned to last week, and after hearing argument on various points of law until 4 p. m., decided that the case would be too long drawn out for him to give his time from ’his own business to and declined to sit further. The matter will now go over until the April term, when Judge Hanley may have to ask the governor to appoint a judge to hear the cause. The pay of special judges is but $5 per day, and an attorney with any practice at all can hardly afford to leave his own business to sit in a long case as special judge. Where the governor appoints —as had to finally be done in the Ketman ditch in Pulaski county—ten dollars per day can. be paid, and it looks as though it would be necessary to have Governor Marshall appoint in this case to get a competent judge. Mr. Berry has no law partner, and must close up his office \ when he leaves home, to the great detriment to his practice, and he is also a candidate for the republican nomination for judge of the BentonWarren circuit, a position now held by Judge Saunderson. The republicans over there think perhaps Berry can defeat Judge Saupderson for re-election, and he has agreed to make a try for ,it. Whether he will be able to knock the persimmon remains to be seen. Judge Saunderson has made a popular judge and the republicans will have no walkaway to defeat 1 him, notwithstanding the huge normal republican majority in the circuit.

It is to be regretted that more delay is caused in the hearing for the continuation of the Iroquois drainage scheme, which is to ditch the river from the present ending of the dredging west of town to a point some two miles west of Brook. That the improvement will eventually go through is admitted hy almost everybody, and the sooner it is done the sooner will the lands drained thereby be reaping the benefit.