Case ID: ga_40/html/0553-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

William Henderson, plaintiff in error, vs. James H. B. Shackleford, administrator, defendant in error.
    1. In 1847,. Henderson employed Anhilles D. Shackleford, an attorney-at-law, to recover for him certain land in Whitfield county, agreeing to give him' one half of the land if recovered, Shackleford paying all expenses. The cause was tried several times, was several times before the Supreme Court, and finally Henderson got the land. Shackleford had died before the final recovery. Upon a suit by his administrator for his fees, Henderson pleaded the general issue, that said contract was champertous, and that Shakleford did not recover the land, but that the recovery was by other attorneys, employed and paid by him, after Shackleford’s death. There was a verdict against Henderson.
    Henderson sued out a writ of error. The bill of exceptions set out in full all the evidence used on the trial except as follows: '“Complainants also introduced the 13th, 16th and 23d volumes Georgia Reports, containing the reports of the decisions of the Henderson-Morris case, when it was carried to the Supreme Court.”
    As Shackleford’s name is marked for Henderson in said cases in the Supreme Court decisions, it seems that these decisions were used as evidence to show that fact, and that these decisions were favorable to Henderson: See Henderson vs. Hackney, 13th Ga. R., 282; 16th, 521; 23d, 381. But the record did not show for what they were introduced.
    3. After the bill of exceptions was l’ead, counsel for defendant in error stated that they had waited till the reading was completed, that the Court might see the materiality of the decisions, to a clear understanding of the errors complained of, and then moved to dismiss the writ of error, because said decisions were not set out in the bill of exceptions, nor did it appear for what purpose they were introduced.
    
    W. H. Dabney, D. A. Walker, for plaintiff in error.
    J. A. R. Hanks, Wright & Featherston, for defendants.
    Note : In all cases where motions to dismiss were overruled, of the facts and judgments are at the ends of the cases reported.