“Advantage was taken of this statute by a Jew in the city of Rochester to evade the payment of goods which had been delivered to him. The summons which had been served upon him was made returnable upon a Saturday, and upon the return day the Jewish defendant, evidently at the instigation of his Jewish lawyer, appeared in the action for the sole purpose of objecting to the jurisdiction of the court upon several grounds, but more especially for the reason that the defendant was a Jew, and that as such he uniformly observed Saturday of each week as ‘holy time.’ “This case was used to tie up the business of two courts until it was finally taken to the appellate division of the Supreme Court, where Judge Adams rendered a decision in which he said: “‘In order to give to this section the construction claimed by the defendant’s counsel, we must hold that the legislature has not only utterly ignored this elementary principle (that to constitute a crime there must be not only the act itself, but a criminal intent must accompany the act), but, in violation thereof, has declared that, while in the case specified, malice or intent must exist in order to constitute the crime of procuring a process to be served on Saturday or of procuring a civil action to be adjourned to that day, the crime of serving a process which is returnable on Saturday may be committed without any intent accompanying the act. “‘This proposition, it seems to us, has only to be stated to render its absurdity manifest; for the person who served the summons in this action, as is generally the case, was a public officer; and it is fair to assume that he performed his official duty in this instance without knowing, or having any reason to suppose, that the party served regarded one day of the week as more sacred than another. “‘It is true that the defendant is a Jew, and certain racial characteristics may have manifested themselves to such an extent as to acquaint the officer with that fact, but there are other religions than the Jewish which require the observance of the seventh day of the week as “holy time,” and, consequently, if the rule contended for is to obtain, an officer must somehow ascertain, in every instance before serving a process, that the party upon whom it is to be served does not come within the favored class; otherwise he renders himself amenable to the statute. “‘It is inconceivable that the legislature intended that a person thus serving a process returnable on Saturday, in ignorance of the fact that he was in any way interfering with the religious liberty of the party served, should be regarded as a criminal and it is equally certain that a conviction under such circumstances would be absurd and unjust, if not impossible. A construction of a statute, therefore, which leads to such a result should manifestly be avoided if practicable.’ “Judge Adams thereupon reversed the judgment of the county court and of the municipal court, with costs.”