Did I commit a crime? If so I want to come clean. Which gets me to a book entitled The Law of Horses, Including the Law of Innkeepers, Veterinary Surgeons, &c., by a George Henry Hewitt Oliphant.
Shortly after getting called to the Bar in the mid1970s, I borrowed the 1908 edition of this opus from the local law library. Don’t ask me why. I did have some down time on my hands due to an underabundance of business. And it’s not as if I expected a deluge of clients banging at my door with their equine problems. In my 43 years in the downtown Toronto area not one person called me saying , “Can you help me? My horse Ned was crossing Bay and King on a green light when he was struck by some speeding stallion”
Maybe I borrowed the book just for a fun read. There started my problem. I did not return it for about 12 years, when I came across it while moving offices. Not totally my fault. I never received a reminder from the library that it was overdue. The librarian could have called me saying something like, “Hey Strigberger. There are lots of lawyers on the wait list for this book. Have you no consideration?” Nothing. Crickets.
And when I did return the book, I did so in a stealth manner, sneaking it onto a shelf in the basement stacks. Bada bing, bada boom.
Am I guilty of any offence? I asked my number one go to for legal advice- ChatGPT. The answer I got was, “Failing to return a library book for 12 years is not a crime per se. However, shame on you.” Who ever said AI has no scruples?
And even though it may not be a crime, could it entail disciplinary action by the Law Society. I did have visions of a hearing with the disciplinary panel ruling that I was guilty of “conduct becoming of a lawyer”. After all the Benchers have to earn their rights to that infamous wine cellar in the depths of their lair at Osgoode Hall.
However as I said I did want to come clean at one point, like that guilt ridden character in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov. But I decided to wait until I was a few years safely into my retirement.
My confession here was sparked by an article I read the other day where a book checked out in 1943 from a library in San Antonio Texas was recently returned 82 years overdue with a note saying, “Sorry, grandma is not around anymore to pay for this.”
I will say this story does make me feel more relieved. Until now I thought I had a record for tardy library book return. It seems neither I nor grandma hold the official record.
Guinness World Records says the most overdue library book was returned to Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, England, in 1956. It was borrowed in 1668, some 288 years earlier. Good thing the perpetrators and their descendants waited this longץ ; they could have been sentenced to a one-way trip to Australia.
The Oliphant book incidentally is still actually available for sale on Amazon. I checked out the listing and did not see any reviews at all. No clue why. I don’t know about you, but I would not bet the family farm that this book will hit the New York Times bestseller list.
I think I’ll pass. I won’t add the horse book to the cart.
A version of this article originally was published in Law360 a division of LexisNexis Canada