Mr. Coe had a three years' engagement, on £10 a
week, as stage-manager at the Haymarket, from Mr. Sothern and Mr. Bunkstone, when he was suddenly dismissed by Mr. Sothern. He therefore claimed damages from Mr. Sothern, and the case was decided by Baron Cleaaby on Thursday. Mr. Sothern's de- fence was that Mr. Coe extorted bonuses from actresses engaged at the theatre—which was not proved—and shared commissions with an agent who engaged actresses, which was. Mr. Coe's reply to that, howeve,r, was that Mr. Sothern knew of the prac- tice; and though, as Baron Cleasby remarked, it is odd that Mr.
Sothern should have been suddenly enraged about a practice he knew of before, the jury seem to have taken Mr. Coe's view, and gave him £1,035 damages, an amount which will almost ensure an attempt to secure a new trial. There can hardly be a doubt that Mr. Sothern, whether right as to his particular facts or not—a point on which the jury has decided against him—was perfectly right in trying, as he thought, to check a practice which must seriously injure any theatre. As Mr. Hollingshead testified, the direct effect of sharing a theatrical agent's profits must be to make a stage-manager prefer the agent's clients, without reference either to capacity, character, or the in- terests of his theatre. An engineer appointed to supervise a contractor's work might just as well go partners with a contractor, and say that the relation never biassed his judgment in favour of the contractor's demands.
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