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has limited its liability to a sum less than the value of the goods. Notwithstanding this familiar rule of law, literally thousands of important agreements are drawn which fail adequately to protect the seller in such a contingency."

Again, the courts, with striking unanimity, have declared that a clause which purports to require the payment of liquidated damages upon the happening of any one of a number of breaches of varying importance which may be out of all proportion to the sum stipulated as liquidated damages will constitute an unenforcible penalty. Yet how many agreements are drawn which daily violate this elementary rule of law.

While perpetual motion may be a dream, of the making of law books there seems to be no end. In fact, it is one of America's chief industries. Their rising tidal wave threatens to submerge not only the Bench and Bar, but, also, those whose editorial duties, like mine, includes the laborious task of reviewing them. In spite of all this, there is a distinct and genuine need for a book such as Gordon's Annotated Forms of Agreement. Drawing its material from adjudicated cases and from forms of agreement which have withstood the test of actual use, this book, to use a hackneyed but apt term in this case, fills a long-felt want.

I have marked the development of this work during the long years of its conception. The amount of labor and care which it entailed can best be understood only by one who has thus observed its growth, or by one who undertakes the herculean task of comparing the contents of the book with its sources. The book is not a product of a theorist. On the contrary, forged in the school of actual practical experience, it has been tempered by a keen analytical mind which has long specialized in this field of work.

The author has studiously adhered to the most approved lines of modernistic draftsmanship. The result is that the various agreements are free from archaic expressions, anachronisms, redundancies, and clumsiness of diction. It is particularly

Miller v. Harvey (1917), 221 N. Y. 54, 16 N. E. 781, L. R. A. A. 1917 F 559; Uniform Sales Act, section 46, subdivision 2.

See

See Form No. 80, post, which expressly makes known the duty of the seller to declare to the carrier, the full value of the goods shipped. 'Stimpson_v. Minsker (1917), 177 App. Div. 536, 164 N. Y. Supp. 465. Form No. 67, post, for a good example of a proper provision for liquidated damages.

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interesting to note that the author has escaped the bondage of empty formalism. For example, he has, almost invariably, abandoned the use of that misleading consideration clause, "now, therefore, in consideration of $1.00 and other good and valuable consideration, etc." Since the nominal consideration almost never is received, an agreement which contains such a consideration clause, but no mutual promises, is, nevertheless, nudum pactum, if it is intended as a bilateral agreement. The substitution of the simple consideration clause "wherein it is mutually agreed," is not only more in harmony with the facts which usually attend the making of an agreement, but is, also, far more scientific. The usefulness of indicating the actually decided cases from which many of the forms have been taken and of supporting the legal force of other forms by legal citations, is too obvious to require elaboration. In this respect, the book represents a marked and valuable departure from, and improvement upon, others.

The importance of exercising foresight in preparing an agreement cannot be stressed too much. This book will be particularly valuable to the lawyer as an aid in this connection. Representing, as it does, the foresight of numerous attorneys, and containing so many agreements which have been tested in the fire of real litigation, it cannot but prove a valuable guide to lawyers, who desire to protect in futuro the rights of their clients one of the most difficult tasks which confronts the draftsman.

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An examination will disclose that rules of law have been correctly treated by the author as something more than nebulous principles. With the help of this book, it should be a simple matter for any draftsman readily and properly to safeguard the rights of his client under all ordinary circumstances.

My long experience as a professor of law has impressed me with the fact that, while law school students may be well grounded in the principles of law, they are handicapped by a lack of knowledge of their practical application. Theory and actual practice seem to represent too frequently opposite sides of the shield of life. If this book were introduced for study in the courses in our schools and colleges of law, the result, in my opinion, could not but be beneficial to the law schools, to

their students, and last, but certainly not least, to the Bench and Bar.

The author deserves the thanks of the profession for his success in his important undertaking.

I. MAURICE Wormser,

Editor of the New York Law Journal
Professor of Law, Fordham University
School of Law.

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