Case ID: va_16/html/0535-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

* Shanks & M’Rae v. Fenwick.
    Tuesday, November 26th, 1811.
    i. Appellate Practice — Reversal of Judgment — Refusal of bower Court to Sign Exceptions. —The court of appeals will not reverse a judgment, on the ground that the court below refused to sign and seal a bill of exceptions to its opinion overruling a motion for a new trial: If the weight of evidence exhibited supports the verdict.
    a. Evidence — Contradictory.  — In trials at law, where the evidence exhibited is legally admissible, but contradictory, it is most proper to be left to the consideration of the jury.
    3. Court of Appeals — Jurisdiction.—Quaere, has the court of appeals the power of coercing the judge of an inferior court to seal and allow a bill of exceptions, regularly tendered, and containing the whole truth of the case?
    In an action of covenant, in the district court holden at Richmond, the jury found a verdict for the plaintiff for 15171. 11s. 7d. damages; whereupon the defendants immediately after the said verdict was rendered, moved the court for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was contrary to the evidence and the law of the case: but the court overruled the motion, and refused the new trial. The defendants then tendered a bill of exceptions to the court’s opinion, (setting forth, as they alleged, all the evidence in the cause,) “which the court refused to sign, because the witnesses had left the court, and the testimony not being accurately stated, nor taken down at the trial, when the full examination on both sides was had, they therefore thought it improper to certify the same.”
    
      
       The principal case was cited in Taliaferro v. Franklin, 1 Gratt. 340.
      Bills of Exception. — See monographic note on “Bills of .Exception” appended to Stoneman v. Com., 25 Gratt. 887.
    
   Judgment according to the verdict; whereupon the defendants appealed. After argument by Hay, Call and Wickham, for the appellants, and Williams, for the ap-pellee, the following opinion of this court was pronounced by the president, Saturday, November 30th.

The court (not deciding on its power to coerce the judge of an inferior court to seal and allow a bill of exceptions regularly tendered, and containing the whole truth of the case, and admitting, but not deciding, that the bill of exceptions in this case ought to have been sealed and allowed by the judge of the district court, and is now part of the record) is of opinion that the weight of evidence, exhibited in the said bill of exceptions, supports the verdict; and that the said evidence, being contradictory, was most proper for the consideration of the jury. The judgment of the district court is therefore affirmed.