Case ID: ohio-st_58/html/0398-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Townsend v. Harrison.
    
      Petition in error■ — Not filed within six months after judgment of lower court — Petition in error not to be dismissed, when.
    
    Where all the assignments of error in a petition in error, are founded upon a bill of exceptions taken in a lower court, but not filed in a higher court within six months after the rendition of the judgment in the court below, the judgment should be affirmed, but such state of the record is no ground for dismissing the petition in error.
    (Decided April 19, 1898.)
    Error to the Circuit Court of Wood county.
    The action below, was for the recovery of damages for a personal injury. The case was tried in the common pleas court, and judgment rendered in favor of the plaintiff. A motion was made for a new trial, which was overruled and exceptions taken, and a bill of exceptions was allowed, signed and filed, and ordered to be made part of the record. A petition in error was filed in the circuit court, together with a transcript of the docket and journal entries, and the original papers, including the bill of exceptions. The circuit court affirmed the judgment, and thereupon Mr. Townsend filed his petition in error in this court, together with a transcript of the docket and journal entries, and the original papers, except the bill of exceptions. Printed records were duly filed in this court, including what purports to be the bill of exceptions, but the bill of exceptions itself was not filed in this court. After the expiration of six months from the rendition of the judgment of affirmance in the circuit court, the defendant in error filed his motion in this court to dismiss the case and affirm the judgment of the lower court, for the reason that the plaintiff in error failed to file the bill of exceptions in this court. The errors assigned in the petition in error, all depend upon the bill of exceptions. After the filing of the motion, the plaintiff in error delivered the bill of exceptions to the clerk of this court, and requested that it be filed, and it was present in court upon the hearing of this motion. ■
    
      J. 0. Troup, and Hurd, Brumback <& Thatcher, for the motion.
    
      R. B. Moore, contra.
   By the Court :

The errors assigned in the petition in error are all founded upon the bill of exceptions, and as that was not filed within six months after the rendition of the judgment of affirmance by the circuit court, the errors, if any, based upon such unified bill of exceptions, are barred by section 6723, Revised Statutes.

As to such errors, the filing of the bill of exceptions was bringing in new causes for reversal, in the nature of new causes of action, after the time for filing a petition in error had expired. This can not be done. The same principle prevails as in attempting to bring in, by amendment, a cause of action which has become barred by the statute of limitations. Hill v. Ludwig, 46 Ohio St., 373.

As the bill of exceptions was not filed in this court within six months it forms no part of the record, and with it out, the petition in error assigns no cause of error upon the record, but this is no ground for a dismissal of the petition in error, but is a good ground for affirming the judgment.

As the court has been compelled to look into the record in passing upon the motion to dismiss, and finding the condition of the record, the court will not lay the case aside to be taken up in its order, but will at once affirm the judgment.

Judgment affirmed.