Case ID: shan-cas_1/html/0025-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

BROWN v. BROWN.
    (S. C., Thomp. Cas., 41-42.)
    Knoxville,
    September Term, 1849.
    1. CHANCERY PRACTICE. Evidence. Oath of accounting party to his account.
    The rule that allows the accounting party to prove by his own oath an account to the amount of $500 in items not exceeding- $20 each, applies to the party sought to be charged, and not to the party seeking to charge another. [Ooodner v. Browning, 9 Hum., 783; Johnson v. Brice, 3 Head, 550, 551. Parties may now testify with very limited exceptions. See Code, secs. 5592-5G01, and notes.]
    2. SAME. Clerk and master’s cost for taking account.
    The clerk and master may append to his report extracts from the proof to justify and illustrate his account; but it is an abuse to incorporate depositions into an account, and to charge for cox>ying them at the rate allowed on his report
    3. SAME. Same. Disallowed, when.
    Where the clerk and master totally misconceives an order of reference, and so takes the account as to require it to be set aside in toto, it seems that his costs will be disallowed.
   In this case the clerk and master had allowed the complainant to prove various items of charge by his own oath. The supreme court on exceptions, Green, J., delivering the opinion, stated the rule as follows:

A complainant seeking an account cannot charge the respondent under the rule allowing the accounting party to prove by his own oath to the amount of five hundred dollars in items not exceeding twenty dollars. It is true a complainant may, under some circumstances, be an accounting party within the meaning of the rule; for instance, when an account is ordered against him, he may under the rule discharge himself; but when he files the bill and seeks to charge the opposite party, the rule does not apply. Its application is only allowed in favor of the party sought to be charged.

Upon the decree in this case being presented, a motion was made to revise in several items the taxation of costs which had been sent up by the clerk and master of the court below. Among other things, Maynard stated that the depositions upon which the accounts of the clerk and master were founded, were copied at large into the accounts, and charged for at the rate per copy sheet allowed for accounts; and this> he said, was the practice of many clerks.

Green, J., said that it was proper and allowable for a clerk and master to append to his report extracts from the proof to justify and illustrate Ms account, and that he approved of their so doing; but to copy depositions at large or to take them and incorporate them into an account, and to charge as for an account,was an abuse.

Nelson made the question whether the court would allow for several accounts' in the same case. Green, J., said he thought the proper practice would be to disallow the clerk’s cost in cases where he totally' misconceived an' order of reference, and so took an account as to require it to be set aside in toto; but where it was merely modified upon exceptions, the costs would be allowed.