Draft:William S. Case

William Scoville Case (June 27, 1863 – February 28, 1921) was a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1919 to 1921.

Born at Tariffville, Connecticut to William Cullen Case and Margaret Turnbull Case.

Connecticut Reports, volume 95, pages 743 - 745

His ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Hartford County and he traced his descent from them through men who held important places in its affairs. His father was a noted lawyer and orator, a brief account of whose life may be found in the seventy-sixth volume of Connecticut Reports, at page 711. When Judge Case was a boy the family removed to Granby, and that was his home until the exigencies of his public office induced his removal to Hartford and later to West Hartford, where he lived at the time of his death. He prepared for college at the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, and went thence to Yale College, from which he graduated in 1885. While there, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and the Scroll and Key society, and was managing editor of the “Yale Record.” After graduation, he studied law in the office of his father and was admitted to the bar in Hartford County in 1887. In the legislative sessions of 1887 and 1889, he acted as clerk of bills. In October, 1891, he was appointed law clerk at the United States Patent Office and continued there until April, 1893. In 1895 he published a novel, “Forward House,” which was very favorably received. He became judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Hartford County in July, 1897, a judge of the Superior Court in October, 1901, and a justice of the Supreme Court of Errors August 23d, 1919, which position he held until his death, February 28th, 1921. In June, 1919, he received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Trinity College. On April 8th, 1891, he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Nathan Nichols, of Salem, Massachusetts. Three children were born to them, William Nichols, who died in infancy, Mary, now Mrs. George Hart, and John Rodman. The latter two, with their mother, survive him.

Judge Case had a nature rarely endowed. In his personal associations he was generally regarded as a recluse. It is true that he was never a seeker for companionship among men, and was indifferent to those who did not by their personalities or gifts arouse in him a spark of real interest; but to the few who met this test, he was genial, expansive, and full of the liveliest and most thoroughgoing fun; to them and to his family he could be overwhelmingly tender, deeply emotional, ardently impulsive. He loved music, so vitally that it was almost a necessary adjunct of his life. He had a rich artistic talent, which, developed seriously, might easily have brought him success and fame, but which he used to while away the tedium of wearying trials or idle moments. Some day, perhaps, his caricatures of court officials, lawyers and witnesses who came into his courtroom may be offered to a larger circle than the chosen few to whom he enjoyed showing them; his eye for the inner man was too keen and his pen too skilled to permit that now. He delighted in great books and had a fine literary taste. He could write, and young as he was when he wrote it, “Forward House” held no mean promise for the future; and while in the busy calling he chose there was no opportunity to realize any literary ambition he might have had, his skill in the use of words served him well; for it made possible the clarity, pungency, and often the wit of his memoranda and opinions. Always he knew, not merely just what he desired to say, but just how best to say it. And one other quality he had which marked him apart from other men, his sense of humor. He was quick to catch and value the little oddities and humorous incidents that came to his attention and had a fine gift for recounting them; and he could spin a tenuous web of incongruous thoughts from some trivial situation or unusual circumstance which would hold his auditors as long as he willed upon the delightful hesitant verge of laughter. With his personality and his gifts he could not be other than a fine public speaker, but he could rarely be persuaded to appear in that capacity.

With almost twenty-four years, the best of his life, spent upon the bench, it is as the judge that he was best known and by most men valued. His associations there with the bar were most happy; except in brief periods of ill-health, he was equable in temper, showing impatience only with stupidity, sham or pretense, or with a failure on the part of an attorney properly to prepare or fairly to present his case; he had no favorites at the bar, and no attorney ever hesitated to bring his case to hearing before him; and he was particularly kindly to the young lawyer making perhaps his first appearance in court. He understood men and the motives which moved them; insincerity or falsehood could not escape his clear vision, but for their weaknesses and failures he had sympathy; the honest but embarrassed witness found in him a friend, for often with a question or two he would bring order into their confused narratives, or throw into relief the essential fact in a wearisome mass of detail. His mind was keenly analytical; without effort, it would seem, he grasped the true significance of a circumstance or the essentials in a situation, and so quickly, that often he would leave the attorneys groping behind. He had integrity, not merely an unconscious and unquestioned honesty in act, but that rarer quality of intellectual honesty, in the light of which he valued not merely men and causes, but tested his own endeavors and thoughts and ideals. And he worked justice, not in the narrow sense of applying to the concrete situation before him his own abstract conceptions of right, but with a broad understanding of the underlying principles which, however they might affect the interests of the immediate parties, would, in the long run, work out the most good to the greatest number. He valued the garnered wisdom stored in the reports of former decisions; but, no case-bound lawyer, he was thoroughly awake to the movements of the time and quick to detect and reject the obsolete or the meretricious. To him, the law was no static code, fast fixed in old bonds and unbreakable precedents, but it was a minister to human progress. And so he served it, nobly. He was a great judge, and, had he lived, his figure would have grown to an even greater stature in deed and in the thoughts of men.

One who knew him in his years upon the bench of the Superior Court says: “He was born to be a judge; he needed neither cap, wig, nor gown to dignify his office. There was something about his very presence in the courtroom which instantly commanded respect, and which dignified the institution of which he constituted so large a part and intensified the majesty of the law for which he had such profound respect. Litigants and witnesses, jurors and spectators, left his court with a renewed confidence in the integrity of our institutions, in the impartiality of our administration of justice, and in the capacity of that branch of the government to fulfill its functions.” And another, who was associated with him upon the bench of the Supreme Court, speaks as follows; “It was then, in those intimate relations, and in the light of what was there revealed that I came to appreciate to the full Judge Case’s mental grasp, the acuteness, alertness, and keenness of his mind which led him straight through the intricacies of a case, however involved, and to discern what were the real issues of it. And he did that so easily and quickly that it was almost uncanny. He not only saw what the issues were, but also had the legal acumen to apply the appropriate law to their determination and so to the determination of the case. It was a pleasure to be with him in consultation. Never verbose, never contentious, always willing to give heed to what another had to say, he went right to the point, it seemed to me, as very few are able to do.”

• Prepared by Hon. William M. Maltbie of the Hartford County Bar, at the request of the Reporter.

References

Category:1863 births Category:1921 deaths Category:Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court

This open draft remains in progress as of July 5, 2023.