Up: Hayward
YOR: 53 of 113
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for reasons of health inevitably threw he lion's share of the work
on the younger man, who seized the opportunity to prove his worth
and develop his ideas. Under the guiding hand of William Hayward,
a good organiser and administrator, the business forged ahead. As
a result of Eckstein's energy and perseverance, within ten years it
was to double both in size and influence.
Meanwhile, a wrangle between lawyers as to the
Hamiltons' infringement of the patent had failed to reach a satisfactory
conclusion. What H. T. Walker many years after described as "an impudent
imposition" could only be proved by an action at law which, however
reluctantly, Hayward Brothers were finally compelled to take against
their former employee and his father in 1879. The case came up for
hearing in the High Court before Mr. Justice Hawkins in November of
that year. Answers to two questions put to the jury resolved the issue:
Question: Whether, having regard to
the prisms described in the plaintiff's specification and shown in
his drawings, and especially to the operative parts thereof, used in
the transmission of light, the defendants use any glass light having
the same operative parts for the transmission of light?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Have the defendants infringed
the plaintiff's patent?
Answer: Yes.
The Jury also found, in answer to the judge,
that it was a new thing so to glaze pavement lights. Judgment with
costs was entered for Hayward Brothers but the Hamiltons were tenacious
adversaries and had somehow convinced themselves that justice was on
their side. A second action on a technical point had to be endured in
a divisional court before Mr. Baron Pollock, who supported Mr. Justice
Hawkins' judgment. An appeal was lodged against both these judgments
and the action then came before Lords Justices Bramwell, Brett and
Cotton in the Court of Appeal.
Lord Justice Brett, in the tradition of judges,
actually asked "What is a pavement light?", but it was he of the three,
for all his professed ignorance of the subject, who most nearly expressed
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