n the
receipt in the first place and all the waste time of the trial would
have been saved. "No," says the technical lawyer, "if I had disclosed
my evidence before, the plaintiff would have framed his evidence to
meet the situation." The modern view is otherwise. In France, for
instance, no paper can be offered in evidence on a trial unless it has
been shown to the attorney for the other side beforehand and everyone
has had a chance to examine it. Indeed, this exhibition of original
documents is conducted in so open and honest a fashion that it is
customary to send all the original papers to the other side without
even taking a receipt or retaining a copy and in the whole history of
the French bar the loss of such a paper has never been known.

It seems more practical and sensible that the lawyers for the
defendant should be required to state the nature and detail the facts
of his defense. It is the difference between the old idea of trial and
the new. The first was an imitation battle, the new idea is not that
it is so much a struggle as an investigation of the facts. If the
plaintiff wants to meet the receipt he can make a counter-attack or
explanation in the rebuttal and explain how he came to sign the
receipt in full. The judge and the jury feel the necessary element of
the trial is to arrive at the facts and that the planning and methods
of charge and counter-charge are not so significant. The old
conception of the trial as a battle is disappearing.

The opening by the defendant at the beginning directly after the
plaintiff has finished his opening and before a witness is called,
makes the trial simpler to the minds of the jurymen who are to decide
the facts. The pleadings are supposed to define and state the issues
but as they are usually technical they have become not sufficiently
pliable. The defendant by his answer denies merely the facts stated in
the plaintiff's complaint in the paragraphs numbered six, eight, and
ten. The defendant on his opening should be compelled to make plain to
the minds of the jury what he intends to show. He should take the
position of a plain business man who says, These foolish people
imagine they have a claim against me. They have nothing of the kind.

The plaintiff says that he understood the contract to be so and so
and that acting on that assumption both parties did certain things and
know the defendant with evil intent and wrongfully forgetting the duty
he owes to keep his w