Case ID: mann-unrep-cas_1/html/0098-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Manning, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

No. 6340.
    Succession of Philip Drumm. Opposition of Richard Lloyd.
    A witness can be discredited by otlier means than by direct attack upon his character for veracity. His story may be contradictory, his answers evasive, his conduct shuttling. The circumstances that attended the act or surrounded the person of whom he is speaking may make impossible or improbable the doing that which he swears was done, and these circumstances often converge to and compel a conclusion adverse to his credibility with more directness and more force than the sworn statement of another that he is not credible.
    Appeal from the Second District Court of New Orleans. Tissot, J.
    
      Cotton & Levy for the Succession Appellant. Shackleford for Opponent Appellee.
   Manning, C. J.

The controversy was over a note which the executor refused to recognize as a valid claim against the succession on the ground that it' was forged. The opinion minutely analyses the evidence, detailing it in extenso. Two witnesses had testified to the genuineness of the note, swearing that they saw the deceased sign it, and no witness had been offered to discredit them by swearing they were not to be believed, but the court sustained the executor, and recited the whole history, which compelled the conclusion that the note was forged.

Judgment reversed.