The last of 22 performances by Morris Ankrum as a Perry Mason judge. Ankrum died of trichinosis 43 days before this episode aired.
In all 4 of his appearances, Richard Hale plays a rich and old asshole that everybody hates, he is near death in 3 appearences, and is murdered twice.
At the end of the episode, Della quotes a line from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. This is taken from his book "The Common Law" (1881). A more complete quote is, It is commonly known that the early forms of legal procedure were grounded in vengeance. Modern writers have thought that the Roman law started from the blood feud, and all the authorities agree that the German law begun in that way. The feud led to the composition, at first optional, then compulsory, by which the feud was bought off. The gradual encroachment of the composition may be traced in the Anglo-Saxon laws, and the feud was pretty well broken up, though not extinguished, by the time of William the Conqueror. The killings and house-burnings of an earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson. The appeals de pace et plagis and of mayhem became, or rather were in substance, the action of trespass which is still familiar to lawyers. But as the compensation recovered in the appeal was the alternative of vengeance, we might expect to find its scope limited to the scope of vengeance. Vengeance imports a feeling of blame, and an opinion, however distorted by passion, that a wrong has been done. It can hardly go very far beyond the case of a harm intentionally inflicted: even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
Last of four appearances in the series by Richard Hale and the last of three by Robert Brown.