Correction: Last week it was reported that Civil War veteran, A. [Abel] Snow, had died, when it was discovered in this week’s newspaper, that it was his brother, Alphes [Alpheus] Snow. Alphes M. Snow enlisted in Co. H, 141st Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. It was christened the Buttermilk Regiment by the Philadelphia Zouaves on account of their being farmer boys and one of the best fighting machines in the service. Alphes Snow was wounded during the war, being shot through the knee. He was a lover of home life and wondered very little from it. He was loyal to his country, his friends and always present at the post, rarely ever missed a meeting. He was at the soldiers’ home at Hampton, Va. when his death occurred, brought home, and was buried with the honors of the Post at Franklin Forks cemetery.
Montrose Bible Conference Notes: E. T. Corfield, of Montrose, has written another beautiful hymn: “Do it now.” Miss Nellie Allbright Weber wrote the music for it. Mr. Corfield is a gifted writer and his poems show the deepest fervor. The regular attendance at conference this year has been the largest in its history. 240 registered and have slept on the grounds, either in tents or rooms in the tabernacle./Picnicking was again very popular and it was an interesting sight to see groups of friends gathered around the lunch baskets on the hill top overlooking the lake./It has been a good conference week. No soaking rains to dampen people’s ardor, no high winds to flap tent sides or blow them down. It has been a time of peace and happiness of cloudless skies, of uplifted hearts. What wonder that the dwellers on Tent Hill leave with reluctance and that they have already began making plans to be here next year.
Cases of Desertion: The desertion case against Joseph Harvey was heard Friday, Judge H. A. Denney presiding. It was unusual in the fact that all the Harvey relations testified that Joseph’s wife would not let him work, that he wanted to work, but she just put a damper on that kind of thing. The Judge advised a making up between the couple but they would not, so he made an order that the man pay his wife $2 a week for the child till further orders. ALSO Walter August also faced the charge of desertion. He simply left home one day without telling, and sent a postal back to his wife that he was going west to earn more money, and to all appearances, straightway forgot he had a wife in Forest City to support. Last May he returned poorly dressed, and met his wife on the street and asked her to go to Syracuse to live, said he had a good job. She did not believe him and had him arrested. He was ordered to pay $12 a month till further notice.
Montrose – Chenango street is being greatly improved. Within the last two years there have been many changes. Much of this has been accomplished by contractor Walton. The house he bought and built over, owned at present by John F. Dolan, is now a handsome residence. Recently he did over Searle’s garage which now stands resplendent in green and white paint. Also built the charming home of F. H. Wilson and his own home is becoming one of the most beautiful in town. William Ryan has laid a fine walk to his house and the old Bethel church landmark, bought by John Rutan, is fast becoming a modern house. Sylvester W. Wood, Mr. Henry and L. P. Chesley has prettily decorated and painted their homes. If as many improvements are made in the next two years, Chenango bids fair to become a really fine looking street.
South Harford – Stanley Carey has a very fine new buggy. Now girls, look your best. In North Harford, the youngest child of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Darrow met with a serious accident recently, as he walked in front of the mowing machine knife getting both legs badly cut. He was taken to Scranton, where he is being cared for in the hospital, and we hear that they think both legs can be saved. The Darrow family has the sympathy of the community.
Thompson – Rev. and Mrs. W. E. Webster, of Scranton, a former pastor of Thompson, invited the Optimistic (ladies) and Pessimistic (gentlemen) Circles, of Thompson, of which they are members, to visit them in their new home in Scranton last Friday evening. They were royally entertained. The Scranton orchestra was present. At 6:30 a course supper was served in the Sunday school rooms of the church. A. H. Crosier, A. E. Foster, Clayton Lewis, Chas. Sumner, Linn Spencer, Walter Brown and Willard Spencer kindly furnished autos for the occasion.
Uniondale – The Suffragists held a picnic on the Reynolds shore at Lewis Lake, Friday afternoon.
Hopbottom – Kind friends and neighbors of Frank Squires made him a happy surprise in haying and placed about 24 loads of hay in his barn. Frank is on the sick list at present. Good dinner was served.
East Lynn – Lloyd Bush has had some very unprofitable experiences recently. On returning home, after being absent a short time, found nearly all of his fine flock of turkeys in a dying condition, showing symptoms of poisoning. Later he found over 80 of his chickens showing the same symptoms. The chickens were a fine, healthy flock of full bloods which he had given special attention.
Great Bend – Bruce Chase, aged 40, an attorney of Pen Argyl, Pa., was instantly killed Saturday afternoon while fishing in the Susquehanna near Hallstead. Death was due to the accidental discharge of a small 33-calibre rifle in the hands of Fred Brooks, of Susquehanna. The two men and their families were camping at Hickory Grove, not far from Great Bend. At the time of the accident Chase and Brooks were trolling the river, Chase handling the line and Brooks seated in the boat was firing at a target on the shore. The trolling hook snagged, causing the boat to come to a sudden halt, and both men lurched forward. The hammer of the rifle snapped and Chase fell lifeless. Dr. A. S. Blair, the county coroner, empaneled a jury which completely exonerated Brooks from intentional killing. Mr. Chase is known to many people in Montrose, having served in Co. G, 13th Regiment, N. G. P., then located in Montrose, during the Spanish- American War. His grandfather, Simeon Bruce Chase, of Hallstead, was once a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. He leaves a wife and three young children, hardly in their teens.
200 YEARS AGO, THE CENTINEL, MONTROSE, PA, August 13, 1816.
MARRIED – On the 11th inst. By J. W. Raynsford, Esq., Mr. John M’Laud, of Lawsville, to Miss Hannah Gregory, daughter of Joseph Gregory, of Bridgewater. ALSO
SAMUEL SELY, Take Notice, that your wife Susana Sely has preferred her petition, or libel to the Court of Common Pleas in and for the county of Susquehanna, praying the said court to “sentence and decree a divorce and separation from the bonds of matrimony,” &c. and that an alias subpoena has issued from the same court, and is now in my hands, commanding and requiring you to appear before the Judges of the said court, on the first Monday of September next, at Montrose, at a Court of Common Pleas then and there to be held, in and for the County aforesaid, to answer to the said petition or libel, and further to shew cause, if ought you have to say, why your wife, the said Susanna Sely, should not be divorced from the bonds of matrimony, aforesaid, she has contracted with you. AUSTIN HOWELL, SHERIFF. Montrose, August 16, 1816.
In last week’s column, we discussed a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury. Likewise, in the civil arena, litigants have a similar constitutional right. The jury selection process in civil and criminal trials is similar but there are some procedural differences. With the advance of technology, courts struggle with the question of how much of a juror’s private life must be revealed to determine if the juror can be fair and impartial.
In a high profile case in California, a trial judge was faced with this very question. Oracle and Google are involved in copyright litigation. As jury selection approached, the parties wanted to gain significant access to private information relating to each of the prospective jurors. The parties wanted each prospective juror to complete a two-page questionnaire that the parties would get prior to jury selection with the parties requesting at least a day to review. In his written opinion, District Judge William Alsup stated that he “eventually realized that counsel wanted the names and residences from the questionnaire so that, during the delay, their teams could scrub Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Internet sites to extract personal data,” Significantly, the attorneys for the parties did not openly tell the Court that they intended to do this, but when confronted by the Court, they admitted that they were going to look for whatever digital information they could find on each prospective juror. After this candid admission, the judge did not allow the use of the written juror questionnaires.
In the very beginning of his opinion, Judge Alsup provided the following reflection as to the work performed by jurors: “Trial judges have such respect for juries – reverential respect would not be too strong so say – that it must pain them to contemplate that, in addition to the sacrifice jurors make for our country, they must suffer trial lawyers and jury consultants scouring over their Facebook and other profiles to dissect their politics, religion, relationships, preferences, friends, photographs, and other personal information.”
The Judge recognized that this “public” Internet information would assist counsel in assessing potential jurors, but believed that this would create a significant potential for the jurors to reciprocate by conducting their own research regardless of any jury instruction from the Court to refrain from conducting their own investigation. The Court reasoned: “[T]he apparent unfairness in allowing the lawyers to do to the venire that which the venire cannot do to the lawyers will likely have a corrosive effect on fidelity to the no-research admonition. Once our venire learns of the lawyers’ Internet searches. . ., a very serious risk will be presented that they will feel justified in doing to the lawyers (and to the case itself) what the lawyers are doing to them, namely, conducting Internet searches – despite the no-research admonition.”
The Court also expressed concern over the jurors’ privacy interests: “They are not celebrities or public figures. The jury is not a fantasy team composed of consultants, but good citizens commuting from all over our district, willing to serve our country, and willing to bear the burden of deciding a commercial dispute the parties themselves cannot resolve. Their privacy matters. Their privacy should yield only as necessary to reveal bias or reluctance to follow the Court’s instructions.”
In balancing these interests, the Court determined that the attorneys would be required to inform the jurors of their intent to perform Internet searches as to each potential juror, but then the jurors would be given the opportunity to adjust their privacy settings on any particular site so as to bar the attorneys from access. Only after the jurors were afforded this opportunity would the attorneys then be permitted to conduct an Internet search of a potential juror. Thereafter, the Court would instruct the jurors that they are not to conduct any independent investigation of their own and that the Court had balanced the privacy interests of the jurors against the right of each litigant to have information for purposes of selecting a fair and impartial jury.
But how would you feel as a juror knowing that Google was a litigant? How much information do you think that Google has about you or your household as a result of your use of their search engine or products? Next week, we will talk about how Judge Alsup addressed that question.
Spider bites – the horror of it all
People come into pharmacies every day asking the pharmacist about symptoms or to show this “street doc” something on their body did not look right. And Tim, 40, was the perfect example. “Hey doc! Does this look infected?” The area on his arm was about an inch in diameter and was red, raised, and had a small hole in the center of it. “Is this a tick bite?” asked Tim. The pharmacist explained to Tim why it was not a tick bite with its characteristic bulls-eye rash. Rather, the pharmacist suggested that it was a spider bite. Tim was questioned as to what kind of spider bit him but Tim did not know except that he probably got it outdoors.
Painful insect bites deserve attention because they can become infected. This is even more important with spider bites as the infection, if untreated, can lead to death of body tissue. Spiders are a necessary part of the ecological system in that they eat mosquitoes, cockroaches, and aphids. So, if you see a spider in the house, do not kill it. It may be protecting your house without having to use dangerous pesticides. And they are also useful in medicine. Spider venom and web silk are currently being studied by scientists to determine whether it can be used in heart problems, arthritis and pain control.
Wherever you are sitting right now, there is probably a spider hanging around. An estimated 1 million spiders live on 1 acre of land. The number may be closer to 3 million in the tropics. Entomologists estimate that a human is never more than 10 feet away from a spider—ever. Spiders use venom to subdue their prey. The venom glands reside near the chelicerae, or fangs, and are connected to the fangs by ducts. When a spider bites its prey, muscles around the venom glands contract and push venom through the fangs and its victim. Most spider venom paralyzes the prey. Lunch time!
As for spiders biting humans, it is rarely fatal. Antivenin products have become very effective, and it is rare that people actually die from a spider bite. In the United States, an average of only 7 people die from venomous spider bites each year; 8 times as many people die from bee and wasp stings.
Your best plan of attack once you are bitten is to wash the injured site with soap and warm water. Then, apply antibiotic ointment to it. While a visit to the emergency room is usually not necessary, you may want to contact your prescriber who may give you a prescription for an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory, such as ibuprofen. Also, learn about spiders that live in your area. For example, a widespread myth holds that daddy longlegs, also known as granddaddy longlegs or harvestmen, are the most venomous spiders in the world. We are only safe from their bite because their fangs are too small and weak to break through human skin. This myth has been shown to be false on both counts. So don’t squash a spider in the house as they eat ants, cockroaches, mosquitoes and other more annoying houseguests (No – not your crazy Aunt Velma!). They are the marvels of the animal world. Observe how a spider moves. When a spider travels, it always has four legs touching the ground and four legs off the ground at any given moment.
Fascinated, Tim bought a tube of antibiotic ointment and would observe the bite over the next few days to see if it is subsiding. If not, he would visit his nurse practitioner.
Ron Gasbarro, PharmD is a registered pharmacist, medical writer, and principal at Rx-Press.com. Write him with any ideas or comments at ron@rx-press.com.
