Broken Hearts Lose Cash Value

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 199, 26 August 1935, Page 10

Broken Hearts Lose Cash Value

JUDGES DISLIKE BREACH OF PROMISE CASES: TWO STATES IN U.S.A. BAN THEM A flourishing industry that for years has been providing handsomely for the old age of numberless attractive young women and buying little comforts for almost as many broadminded lawyers has received its death sentence in New York State. The breach of promise—or, to give it its more sceptical name, the “heart balm”—action is no more. From now on no woman in the States of New York or Indiana( the Middle West thought of it first) will be able to claim monetary consolation for her wounded feelings from the man who has failed to marry her (says an exchange). For some years there has been a growing feeling in Great Britain against breach of promise actions, though they have never developed into' the blackmailing propositions they are I in America. There are not quite so many clever gold-diggers, nor so many well-off men who are only too anxious to pay blackmailing prices out of court rather than have the undersirable publicity of a suit. It is just three years ago that a team of young beauties, working together in London under a manager, were run to earth as the principals in a lucrative breach of promise combined The girls were doing very well out of! getting tangled up with young men! whose parents were gratifyingly ready to pay £lOO or so to get their youngsters out of the engagement. The settlements were all made out of court—the threat of an action being the blackmailing weapon. There is usually little sympathy for a man who brings a breach of promise action, though this is perhaps a very unfair prejudice, men commonly spending considerably more money than women in the progress of a courtship. A young man who has spent his salary on a girl on the definite understanding that ho was “treating” his future wife might perhaps be justified in feeling the money had been wasted when she marries somebody else, though no such justification will prevent his looking a great “boob” when he brings his complaint into court. For the pathetic type of woman who has suffered serious loss of money or work by being let down at the last moment there is as yet no satisfactory substitute for the breach of promise case, and if the actions were confined to such cases of definite financial loss, breach of promise might lose its present unsavoury flavour. There are still ono or two perfectly bona fide cases in every law term: the middle-aged schoolteacher who gives up her job under promise of marriage and then finds herself without a husband, a job, and the best part of savings . . . the woman who has, over an engaged period of live or six years, been spending her motley on furnishings lor a house v>hi<-h is no use Io her a. spinster I

Then mischief begins to creep into breach of promise only with the awardat the end of it. ing of sentimental damages. That is the real menace, the menace that in America has developed into a racked of the first magnitude and has finally closed the law courts in two States to this kind of petition. It is impossible to believe that, a woman of any real pride can go into court to claim damages for her wounded feelings. The broken heart to which monetary damages are certain balm is too easily patched up to be above suspicion. Thirty years ago it was possible for a jilted woman to claim damages well worth her trouble. I think the record in Great Britain is £50,000, contributed to the broken heart of an actress. Judges have several times in the last few years shown what they thought of sentimental damages by awarding th - angry party th',' sum of one farthing, and telling her not I io he silly.