THE ALMANAC OF DISPUTES

Being a Full Accounting of the Kingdom of Sogmarsh Considered — Correctly — as a Poorly Filed Legal Document, With the Pleadings, and Such Findings as the Ground Permits.

Compiled upon the road, in a cart, between assignments, by S. P. Clout, notary of the High Court of Damp Ledgers, styled by persons who have been served by him "the Blot," which he has never objected to and has latterly had put on his cart.

A PRELIMINARY SUBMISSION, MADE WITHOUT PREJUDICE

The learned reader will be told, by almost everybody, that this realm is a place. The Clerk of the parish will tell you it is a parish; the Committee will tell you it is a survey that will not hold still; the Counting-House will tell you it is a position that carries forward.

They are all describing the same object from the wrong side. Sogmarsh is a document. It is a very old document, in several hands, badly filed, with pages missing and pages inserted, and every hedge, feud, ford and family in it is a clause — and I have spent thirty-one years going up and down it in a cart, notarising, and I have never once found a clause that did not conflict with another clause somewhere else in the instrument.

This is not a complaint. It is my living. A realm that agreed with itself would want no notaries and I should have to go and be honest.

What follows is the case-law: the great standing disputes of this kingdom, each set out as it should be — The Matter · The Pleadings · The Finding — with such rulings as the ground permits, which is fewer than either party would like.

I. IN THE MATTER OF THE GRIDDLE

The Matter. Dry ground. Contested. Claimed by three sheriffs.

The Pleadings. Each of the three sheriffs claims the Griddle lies within his jurisdiction, upon ancient title, and each has said so in writing, at length, annually, for some considerable period.

Not one of the three will walk on it.

The Finding. The Court observes that a claim of jurisdiction unaccompanied by any willingness to enter the jurisdiction claimed is, in the strict sense, an assertion of ownership over one's own paperwork and not over any land. The Griddle is accordingly held by whoever is standing on it, which is nobody, and has been nobody since the Bacon Tree Expedition of 1888, of which the less said the better and of which I have been obliged to say a very great deal.

The dry ruling: three men may own a thing entirely, in triplicate, and none of them possess it, and the thing itself notices no difference whatsoever.

II. IN THE MATTER OF GRIMSHAW'S HEDGE

The Matter. A parcel of ground, disputed four hundred years and upward, the situation of which is not established.

The Pleadings. The Snaggs produce a survey of 1519. The Fettles produce a grant of 1611. Both instruments are genuine; both are beautifully engrossed; they agree in no particular whatever, and where two of the available documents agree the third is emphatic.

The Finding. The Court, being unable to determine the ownership of a parcel whose situation is not established, directed the parties to establish it jointly — and I record, as the notary who read that direction aloud to both families in a wet pasture, that it is the single most consequential sentence any court in this realm has ever handed down, and that it was intended as tidiness.

They have been looking for ninety-one years. The matter stands adjourned sine die. Costs reserved.

The dry ruling: the fastest way to end a four-hundred-year feud is not to settle it. It is to make the parties conduct the search together, in the rain, twice a year, until they find they have become the only two people in the world who care about the same thing.

III. IN THE MATTER OF HOUSE HAVER

The Matter. Whether the said House exists.

The Pleadings. For the Crown: that the House holds land, is spoken of, and is therefore liable. For the House: "Certainly not."

The Finding. The Court has considered the reply and holds it to be, as the Office has long maintained, compelling evidence both for and against. The matter cannot proceed, there being no established party of the second part upon whom process may be served, and process served upon a party who has denied being a party being a nullity, and the denial itself being the only evidence of the party's existence, which would be admitted only if the party existed, which is the matter in issue.

I have drafted eleven attempts at this pleading over nineteen years. They get shorter. The current draft reads, in full: "Nothing further can usefully be done."

The dry ruling: the most impregnable legal position available to any person in this realm is to decline, politely, to be one.

IV. IN THE MATTER OF THE DE WETTS

The Matter. Whether the De Wett house is sinking.

The Pleadings. For the neighbours: that it is, visibly, and at a rate. For the De Wetts: that it is not, and that tea will be served at four as usual, and that the guest is very welcome to sit wherever the floor is most convenient.

The Finding. The Court declines. I record here, and it is the only place in this Almanac where I set aside the professional voice, that I have taken tea in that house, at a table one notices is not level, with people of the most complete and unhurried courtesy, and that not one of them said anything untrue — they simply declined to say the one thing, and offered me cake instead, and I took the cake.

The dry ruling: a fact nobody in the room will name is not, for that reason, a lie. It is a courtesy with a house on top of it. Compare House Haver, which does the same thing about tax and gets less sympathy and possibly deserves more.

V. IN THE MATTER OF THE SQUELCH-VINES (Bastable v. Poxbury, continuing)

The Matter. Trespass by vegetation along a shared boundary.

The Pleadings. Castle Bastable pleads that a vine goes where it likes and is not an agent of its owner. Poxbury pleads that a lawn is a statement, that the statement is being interfered with, and produces photographs.

The Finding. The Court notes that the boundary itself has moved twice during the pendency of these proceedings, in opposite directions, and that both parties have amended their pleadings to suit and neither has remarked upon it. Judgment reserved. It has been reserved since before I was called.

The dry ruling: where the boundary moves faster than the litigation, litigation is not a remedy; it is a hobby, and should be costed as one.

VI. IN THE MATTER OF THE MARSH TOKENS

The Matter. Whether the tokens of Glibb & Sons constitute money.

The Pleadings. The Exchequer moved twice to have them suppressed as an irregularity.

The Finding. Dismissed, upon the second application, in terms I have copied out and keep in the cart: the tokens are not a promise of money and have never been represented as one, and the parish's willingness to accept them is not a matter into which this office may enquire.

I regard this as the finest thing any court in this realm has done. It declined to rule on a belief. It is the only time I have seen an institution here notice the difference between what a thing is and what a hundred and forty people have agreed to treat it as, and decline, correctly, to have an opinion.

The dry ruling: the law may say what a thing is. It may not say what a parish will take for eggs.

VII. IN THE MATTER OF MARITIME BOG-LAW

The Matter. The Scuttle jurisprudence: that anything submerged three seconds is salvage.

The Pleadings. The Scuttles submit that the rule is ancient, that it is universally known, and that it has never been overturned.

All three submissions are correct.

The Finding. The Court, having reviewed the authorities, is unable to locate any authority. The rule appears to rest upon the fact that everybody knows it, which in this realm is not the weakest foundation available and is in several instances the strongest.

Practitioners are advised that in the Drownings the rule is enforced with complete consistency, and that the correct response to being informed that one's hat is now salvage is to congratulate the finder, because the alternative is to argue maritime law with a family who invented it, in a boat, that they own.

The dry ruling: a law nobody can source and everybody obeys is, functionally, the best-enforced law in the kingdom. I have made a comfortable living from laws with far better paperwork and far less effect.

THE NOTARY'S CONCLUDING SUBMISSION

I have set down seven matters. I could set down seven hundred; the cart is full of them; the instrument is enormous and every clause quarrels with its neighbour.

And I will conclude with the finding of my professional life, which I make without prejudice and shall not be arguing:

In thirty-one years I have resolved almost nothing. Not one great matter in this Almanac is closed. The Griddle is unowned; the Hedge is unfound; the Havers are uncertain; the vines are advancing; the boundary has moved again while I wrote this page.

And the realm has not fallen down.

Every one of these disputes is carried, year upon year, by people who have simply gone on living beside the thing they cannot settle — taking tea at a slanting table, walking out in April with a chain, accepting tin for eggs — and I have come, slowly, and against every instinct of my training, to the view that this is not a failure of law. It is what law is for. Not to end a quarrel. To hold it at a temperature where the parties can go on having it, and still lend one another a bucket.

The document is a shambles. I have read it more closely than anybody living.

I would not have it filed.

— S. P. Clout, notary, in the cart, somewhere between Drudgeford and the Drownings, in the wet.