Case ID: pa_279/html/0151-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Lawman, Appellant, v. Peoples Savings & Trust Co. et al.
    
      Res adjudicata — Suit for destruction of codicil — Wills — Demurrer.
    
    In an action to recover damages for an alleged destruction of a codicil to a will, a demurrer will be sustained where the statement of claim shows that there had been a complete adjudication of such question against plaintiff in prior legal proceedings.
    Argued October 17, 1923.
    Appeal, No. 165, Oct. T., 1923, by plaintiff, from order of C. P. Allegheny Co., Jan. T., 1923, No. 2074, sustaining statutory demurrer to statement of claim, in suit of Mary E. Lawman v. Peoples Savings and Trust Co. of Pittsburgh and Moorhead B. Holland, Trust Officer.
    Before Moschzisker, C. J., Frazer, Walling, Simpson, Sadler and Schaffer, JJ.
    Affirmed.
    Trespass for alleged fraudulent destruction of codicil to will. Before Evans, J.
    The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.
    Demurrer sustained. Plaintiff appealed.
    
      Error assigned was, inter alia, order, quoting record.
    
      Mary E. Lawman, appellant, in propria persona.
    
      
      Thomas Patterson, of Patterson, Crawford, Miller & Arensberg, for appellee.
    January 7, 1924:
   Per Curiam,

This is a suit to recover damages for the alleged fraudulent destruction of a codicil to the will of plaintiff’s mother, by which, it is averred, testatrix gave her daughter an income considerably larger than provided for the latter in the probated document. As is correctly said by the court below, plaintiff, in prior proceedings recited in her statement of claim, shows “a complete adjudication [against herself] of the question of whether or not there ever was......in the hands of these defendants,......a codicil” such as she now alleges: see Lawman’s Est., 272 Pa. 237. This being the case, no error was committed in sustaining the demurrer and entering judgment for defendants.

The judgment is affirmed.