Case ID: f-cas_4/html/1156-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "DRUMMOND, District Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Case No. 2,352.
    CAMPBELL v. BARCLAY.
    [4 Biss. 517.]
    
    Circuit Court, N. D. Illinois.
    April, 1869.
    OPENING DEFAULT — MlSUNBERSTAXBIXG BETWEEN Counsel.
    This court will not allow parties to be injured or prejudiced by any misunderstanding between their counsel.
    [At law. Action by Andrew J. Campbell against Daniel Barclay.] This is a motion to set aside a judgment entered on default, it being alleged that the default was taken and entered in violation of an understanding between counsel.
    
      
       [Reported by Josiah H. Bissell, Esq., and here reprinted by permission.]
    
   DRUMMOND, District Judge.

This is the rule that I have always adopted in these cases, that where there is any agreement, understanding, negotiation, or any thing of the sort, as to the disposition of a case, and there is a difference of opinion between the counsel as to what actually took place, that, as it arises from the fact of the negotiations pending between the parties, although there may be a difference of opinion, or misunderstanding, I will not allow the party to be prejudiced by the misunderstanding. Where counsel deal with each other at arm’s-length, each standing on his own rights, of course there need be nothing of that sort; but where a negotiation is entered into between counsel, and difficulty and misunderstandings arise in consequence of that, I do not allow the party to be prejudiced. If you say that there never was anything of the kind at all; that there never was an agreement or understanding that the declaration should be given to them, and plea furnished by them. — that is another matter. If you say this is made out of whole doth, that is another matter.

Judgment set aside.