Case ID: ill-app_207/html/0073-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice O’Connor", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

R. U. Le Cato, Plaintiff in Error, v. James Gianakopolus and Panus Gianakopolus, trading as Gianakopolus & Company, Defendants in Error.
    Gen. No. 22,298.
    
    
      (Not to be reported in full.)
    Error to the Municipal Court of Chicago; the Hon. Edmund K. Jarecki, Judge, presiding. Heard in the Branch Appellate Court at the March term, 1916.
    Reversed and remanded.
    Opinion filed June 27, 1917,
    Statement of the Case.
    Action by R. U. Le Cato, plaintiff, against James Gianakopolus and Panus Gianakopolus, trading as Gianakopolus & Company, defendants, to recover damages for a breach of contract. To reverse a judgment for defendants, plaintiff prosecutes this writ of error.
    Stewart Reed Brown, for plaintiff in error.
    Rose & Symmes, for defendants in error.
    
      Abstract of the Decision.
    1. Evidence, § 304
      
       — when exclusion of letter is error. Where a defendant partner, called and examined by the plaintiff under Municipal Court Act, sec. 33 (J. & A. If 3345), identifies a letter signed by the firm and written by their bookkeeper and testifies that he told the bookkeeper to write the letter, it is error to exclude the letter on the ground that the bookkeeper’s authority to sign it was not shown.
    2. Appeal and erbob, § 1772* — when admission of evidence in trial by court is ground for reversal. Even though a cause is tried by the court without a jury, and it will be presumed that the court did not consider incompetent evidence which it allowed to be in troduced, the admission of such evidence when accompanied by a restriction upon the introduction of competent evidence by the other party may be a ground for reversal.
    
      
      See Illinois Notes Digest, Vols. XI to XV, and Cumulative Quarterly, same topic and section number.
    
   Mr. Justice O’Connor

delivered the opinion of the court.