CRAM PARTY, or CHAMPERTY (Fr., from Lat. eampi partitio, a division of lands), an offense known to the law of England, which consists in a bargain between the plaintiff or defendant in a suit, and a third party, generally a lawyer, that the latter shall have part of the land, debt, or other thing sued for, in the event of success, and that in the meantime he shall carry on the suit at his own expense. This practice has been strictly forbidden by statute in England from very early times (3 Edward I. c. 25; 13 Edward I. c. 49; etc.); and in Scotland the rule of the civil law by which the paetum de quotd Wig (q.v.) was held to be a paetum illkitum (q.v.), and as such void, has all along been part of the common law. Such practices were also forbidden by statute to members of the college of justice (1594, c. 216). There is this difference between the laws of the two countries, however, that whereas in England the offense has always been punished criminally, in Scotland the only penalty which it entails beyond nullity of the bargain, is deprivation of office. In former times, the evil chiefly apprehended from C. prob
ably was, that the honesty of judges might be tampered with by advocates who were generally their friends, and not unfrequently their very near relatives, if permitted to be personally interested in the issue of the causes in which they were profession'ally employed. Iu our own day, the chief danger consists in the encouragement which might thus be given to dishonest and oppressive litigation, and the facilities which would be afforded for nefarious transactions between the agents on the opposite sides. That practices closely analogous to C., though unnamed, are not unknown in the lower strata of profession in all countries. is but too probable_ The necessities of trade have further introduced considerable equitable modifications into the law of C., which will be explained under CHOSE IN AcTiox.