Setting Up Your Browser

Well this may sound as a repetition to the blog post ‘Browser for Law Students’ but trust me its not. We continue here what we left over there and thus recommend reading that blog post and then coming here even if you are not a law student there is some real good stuff over there. However you may want to check out that post also as we won’t be repeating the addons and scripts mentioned in that post again over here.

1) Block those Ads and Annoying Popups :- Ok most of you would be knowing about this but still for the heck of it install AdBlock , AdblockPlus and PoperBlocker in Chrome. Yes install all 3 until you have some dirt cheap laptop running on low memory otherwise install Poper Blocker and either of the two AdBlock or AdBlockPlus. In Firefox install AdBlockPlus and AdBlockPlus Pop-up Addon.

2) Better Youtube – Install Speedbit Video Accelerator to eliminate buffering of videos. (Be careful what you agree to heck you are a law student. Software tries to install third party software and change your homepage etc amongst other things.)  Use this script to download videos from Youtube and this to download subtitles and this for theatre mode, quality selector, stop buffering, forward, backward buttons and much much more. (Unless you know what you are doing install Tampermonkey in Chrome , Greasemonkey in Firefox and Greasekit in Safari Before installing any script.) Firefox users install BYTubeD to batch download Youtube videos or playlists. (Note – Yes its discontinued but it still works on 99% of videos.)

3)  Better Facebook – Tell me honestly how many times have you fell in the trap of turning Facebook to red or green and then eventually ending in spamming people. Well use this script to change Facebook’s theme, full size image on hovering them, hide parts of page, filter news feed and much more than you will ever need.

4) Better Web – This script automatically changes to SSL encryption on many daily used known sites. This script removes the delay in navigating to the download links on many upload sites such as Rapishare, 4shared etc.  As a law student you feel obliged to write nothing less than 500 words in a comment but often when you click post on the Times of India website the page reloads and the text is gone. Now no more use this script to retains text entered into textareas. Use this script to click simple text URL into clickable links. This script to avoid ad.fly links or other paid link redirectors.

5) Panic Button – Use this chrome extension to hide all your tabs at once with one single button and restore them later. Might come in handy during those incognito modes!

Note – Some of the scripts may be browser, plugin specific and may not work on all browsers. Kindly check the compatibility of script prior to its installation.

If you liked this, do also check our post on enhancing your MS Office experience over here.

Read More...

Browser for Law Students

We all love chrome, even the carmakers do. But is that all you need? Nay, while we extensively use our browsers for downloading movies, listening to music and of course surfing the web there is a lot more that nowadays browsers can do.  Here are some interesting uses for law students:-

a) Dictionary – Often come across words which make no sense to you? Install GoogleDictionary in Chrome or DictionaryPop Up in Firfox and you are good to go. Double click any word anywhere and you will get its meaning then and there. Simple Enough?

b) Scripts:-  Scripts are user written piece of code which are used to perform variety of functions.  In order to use scripts it is recommended (Please follow my recommendations till the time you figure out that you are the next Babbage yourself ;) ) to install Tampermonkey in Chrome, Greasemonkey in Firefox and Greasekit in Safari.

An interesting script I use is WikipediaFootnotePopup. This script on hovering mouse on Wikipedia citations shows the citation there only rather than having to scroll at the bottom of page like this:-

There are thousands of scripts on userscript ranging from downloading YouTube videos to Worldcat citation. Go, Explore and in case you find something interesting let me know in the comments, sharing is caring J

c) Read Better – Read much online, don’t like those distracting sidebars. Here lies the solution. Use Clearly for Chrome or iReader for Firefox.  Their basic function is to make blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read. How? See below!

d) Time Management – Use this chrome extension to submit your assignments on time. This will block Facebook, Youtube and any other site you may add for the duration set and will give you 5 minute break in between.

e) Save as PDF – Prefer keeping it offline? Use PrintFriendly & PDF in Chrome or Save as PDF in Firefox to save any webpage as a PDF.

f) Multiple Tabs – Law students often have multiple tabs open. In order to open all the tabs the next time you open the browser use TabCloud in Chrome or SessionManager in Firefox.

g) Bookmark Manager – Often need to bookmark webpages so that you could read them later. Use Pocket in Firefox and Chrome. Enough Said.

h) Citations – Use Zotero for managing citations. Use these plugins in Chrome and Firefox to make life a bit easier.

Note – Some of the scripts may be browser, plugin specific and may not work on all browsers. Kindly check the compatibility of script prior to its installation. 

Need more. Continue here at Setting Up Your Browser.

If you liked this, do also check our post on enhancing your MS Office experience over here.

Read More...

Power Search with Google

It sounds like math. Well, some of it is. Don’t worry about it, it’s not an exam. Just some tricks ;)

Many of you may probably attend some workshop regarding searching for the relevant legal material on the internet. Mostly on a paid database like Manupatra or Westlaw. We teach you to have the most of it, or rather the best of it, through one website which you check if your internet is working! Google!

Legal Research is an integral part of law school curriculum. There are several databases which make the task at hand much easier but then most of them don’t have a really good page rank algorithm.  Although Google is not a legal search engine but it surely makes life easier when you get the results you are looking for.

So let’s say you want to search something on “Legal Positivism’.

There we go and search “legal positivism”. Yes, within quotes. The moment you do that, you are encapsulating your search. You instruct google in very plain words that you want legal and positivism together, not like two hundred words apart. Yes use quotes to make a search of webpages using the exact search query otherwise Google will also give you result which though contain both ‘legal’ and ‘positivism’ but not together and several words apart. So frame your query accordingly. Also Google is case insensitive so it doesn’t matter whether you use Caps or not.

One more thing in a Google search query is that the first word is given the maximum weightage by Google.  So ‘Indian senior advocate’ (without quotes) will give a different result than ‘senior advocate Indian’ (without quotes). Now in our query “legal positivism” let’s say I don’t want stuff by Hart and Austin. So I could make the search query like this

Legal positivism -"John Austin" –Hart

Yes ‘-‘eliminates word which you don’t want in your search result. Don’t give space between the ‘-‘symbol and search query.

Now let’s say I only want stuff which was written between the period 1950 to 1900 so search query becomes

legal positivism -"John Austin" -Hart 1950..1990

Yes ‘..’ can be used to give a range whether it be year, money (40$..60$) anything else doesn’t matter.

Now, there could be chances that you want to read something authentic and not some blog written without any credentials. Colleges’ and university’s websites are a good source for that. One thing good about them is that they all end with .edu in their url address.  So our query becomes:-

legal positivism -"John Austin" -Hart 1950..1990 site:*.edu

Here * denotes all educational websites you could change it to *.gov or *.nic for governmental websites. If you want a specific website to be searched you could have something like this:

legal positivism -"John Austin" -Hart 1950..1990 site:stanford.edu

To conclude here’s the result

Original Query:

“legal positivism”

Boolean Query:

legal positivism -"John Austin" -Hart 1950..1990 site:*.edu

Also Google Scholar is a good place to search for academic material and all the above discussed Boolean operators work in it too.

Some other handy operator are define, filetype, around and *(Wildcard Operator)

Use define like this

define:<Query>
Eg:- define: legal

and Google will define the word  

Use filetype like this

Query> + filetype:<filetype>
Eg:- legal positivism + filetype:ppt

And Google will only search for ppt on legal positivism.

There you go. Google at your disposal. Use it, its free!

Use *(Wildcard Operator) like this

Query * Remaining Query
Eg:- “all * converse”

Will give you result of ‘all star converse’, useful when you don’t remember the exact query.

Use around like this

Query around(x) Query2
Eg:- Legal around(5) anthropology

Will give you result where Legal and anthropology are at a distance of 5 words or less.

Read More...

Morvi Mercantile Bank Ltd. v. Union of India - Case Note - Contracts II - Pledge

Morvi Mercantile Bank Ltd. v. Union of India

Get notes for Contract II and other subjects here.  Read more on Pledge here.

Facts – A firm sent six boxes of menthol crystals worth Rs 35,500/- from Thana (Maharashtra) to Okhla (New Delhi) via Indian Railways. The boxes were marked with the name of the said firm and were consigned to "self".  The firm later endorsed the railway receipts of the boxes in favour of Bank against an advance of Rs 20,000/- made by the Bank to the firm. These boxes did not reach Okhla. Later Railways offered to hand over few boxes to the Bank but the Bank refused delivery on the ground that they were different from the boxes consigned to them.

Trial Court Holding:-

        i.            Railways had misplaced the original boxes

      ii.            Boxes offered by Railways to bank were different from the boxes firms had consigned to the bank (They contained caustic soda instead of menthol crystals)

    iii.            The owner of the goods i.e. the firm had endorsed railway receipts in favour of the bank

     iv.            Bank as endorsee of railways receipts was not entitled to sue the railways for the loss of consignment

Bombay High Court Holding:-

        i.            Affirmed ruling i, ii, and iii of the Trial Court

       ii.            Reversed the iv ruling holing in effect that bank as endorsee of railways receipts is entitled to sue the railways for the loss of consignment but only to the extent to the loss of its security (Rs 20,000/- and not Rs 35,500/-)

Issue & Holding (Majority Opinion - Subba Rao, Raghubar Dayal and Bachawat, JJ) –

        i.            Whether endorsement of railway receipt constitutes a pledge?

o   Yes , endorsement of railway receipt constitutes a valid pledge. This is based on

§  Prior decisions - Ramdas Vithaldas Durbar v. S. Amarchand & Co – Judicial Committee held that the railway receipts were ‘instruments of title’ within the meaning of the Indian Contract Act, 1872

§  Parliament while enacting Indian Sale of Goods Act, 1930, presumably borrowed the definition of "documents of title to goods" from the Indian Factors Act and the English Factors Act noticed by the Judicial Committee, but expressly included in the definition the railway receipt

§  The same definition was incorporated by reference in the Explanation to Section 178 of the Contract Act as amended in the year 1930. This definition is also in accord with the definition of "mercantile document of title to goods" in the Explanation to Section 137 of the Transfer of Property Act.

      ii.            Whether endorsement of a railway receipt for consideration constitutes a mere pledge on the railway receipt or on the goods covered by it as well?

o   Court after noticing all the relevant provisions of the Contract Act, the Transfer of Property Act and the Sale of Goods Act held that railway receipts were documents of title and the goods covered by the documents could be pledged by transferring the documents. Court held that if it is not allowed then a reading of Section 178 of the Contract Act would suggest that an owner of goods cannot pledge the goods by transferring the documents of title, whereas his agent can do so.

    iii.            Whether the person in whose favour railway receipts are endorsed has the right to sue for loss of goods?

o   Court held that as per Section 180 of the Contract Act, a pledge being a bailment of goods as security for payment of a debt, the pledgee will have the same remedies as the owner of the goods would have against a third person for deprivation of the said goods or injury to them. Accordingly, he Bank, being the pledgee, can maintain the present suit for the recovery of the full value of the consignments amounting to Rs. 35,500/-.

     iv.            Whether Bank is the pledgee of the goods or is only the pledgee of the documents of title and accordingly could only keep the documents against payment by the firm?

o   The Court held that on the basis of the facts of the case, the firm by endorsing the railway receipts in favour of the Bank for consideration pledged the goods covered by the said receipts to the Bank.

       v.            The court did not answer the questions whether if the transaction was not a pledge of the goods, the Bank would be entitled to sue on the basis of the contract entered into between the firm and the Railway.

Holding (Dissenting Opinion - Mudholkar and Ramaswami JJ.) –

        i.            After the passing of the Indian Contract (Amendment) Act, 1930, the legal position with regard to the pledge of railway receipts is that the owner of the goods cannot, pledge the goods represented by the railway receipts in the present case unless the railway authorities are notified of the transfer and they agree to hold the goods as bailee for the pledgee. Therefore, there is no valid pledge of consignments of goods between the Bank and the firm and Bank cannot sue the railways for the loss of goods.

      ii.            Bills of lading are mere promises by the seller, being the issuer or transferor, to deliver, or authorise the buyer to receive possession. Railway receipt has been specified in Section 2(4) of the Sales of Goods Act and has been assimilated to bills of lading for the purposes of the right of stoppage in transit but not for all purposes.

    iii.            There are no rights created merely by the reason of the endorsement of a Railway Receipt between the endorsee (bank) and the railway company which has issued the railway receipt to the consignee (firm), the only remedy of the endorsee being against the endorser (firm).

Read More...

Vahura's Empty Glass Theory - Funny Story of Every Legal Intern

Courtesy - Vahura
(May take few seconds to load)

Read More...