To tell the prospective vendee of your old gray mare that she is the finest horse in the county is not fraud even if she is the veriest scarecrow, for it merely represents your opinion -- perhaps colored in part by your desire to sell--and is not a matter of demonstrable fact.

To assure him, however, that she has never run away, had blind staggers, or spring halt, when these assertions are not true, is "a false statement as to a past or existing fact," and as such constitutes a fraud--if he buys your horse.
Now, it frequently has happened in my experience that gentlemen desiring to find purchasers for securities or property of little value have so carelessly mingled statements of fact with opinions, laudations, and prophecies as to their goods, that juries have said that they were guilty of fraud in so doing.

Thus the lawyer becomes at every turn indispensable to the business man.

The following circular was drawn up for one of our clients and is an excellent example of a perfectly harmless and legal advertisement that might easily become fraudulent.

We will suppose that the corporation owned one-quarter of an acre of wood lot about ten miles from a region where copper was being mined.
"SAWHIDE COPPERS "YOUR LAST CHANCE TO BUY THIS STOCK AT PRESENT FIGURES! "The company's lands are located near the heart of the copper district, not far from properties now paying from forty to sixty per cent.