Services After Seduction

Mopping their honest faces on a sizzling Alberta afternoon, district leaders of the United Farmers Party met last week to pass political judgment on Provincial Premier John Brownlee, found guilty fortnight ago of "enticing and seducing" an Alberta Government stenographer, blonde Miss Vivian MacMillan (TIME, July 9). Crestfallen Premier Brownlee had nothing to say, but the judge before whom he had been tried had plenty.

A stickler for old-fashioned British Justice is Mr. Justice William Carlos Ives. Though unable to reverse the jury verdict convicting Premier Brownlee as an enticer and seducer, Justice Ives proceeded last week to dismiss the jury awards of $10,000 damages to Miss MacMillan and $5,000 to her father, a locomotive engineer for Canadian National Railways.

"No illness resulted from the seduction," ruled Mr. Justice Ives. "It is well settled that damage is the gist of this action and no damage has been shown. The right of action of the woman must have the same basis as that of the master [i. e. Locomotive Engineer MacMillan]. . . . There is no evidence that the ability of the daughter to render services was in any way interfered W1th."

Such legal jargon made the Civil Liberties Protective Association see purple with fury. "This decision has set the clock back 300 years!" stormed Civil Liberties President George D. Koe.

Meanwhile the United Farmers' caucus, unimpressed by Mr. Justice Ives's opinion that Miss MacMillan is as serviceable as ever, had accepted Premier Brownlee's offer to spare the Party embarrassment by handing his resignation to the representative of George V in Alberta, Lieutenant Governor W. L. Walsh. No question of the United Farmers' right to continue to rule Alberta was raised. His Majesty's representative merely appointed another United Farmer, Richard Gavin Reid, Provincial Treasurer and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Lands and Mines, to carry on as Premier.

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