Case ID: ill-app_185/html/0386-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Barnes", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

United Breweries Company, Plaintiff in Error, v. G. Bernard Anderson, Administrator, and Edward Swartz, Defendant in Error.
    Gen. No. 19,197.
    (Not to be reported in full.)
    Error to the Municipal Court of Chicago; the Hon. David Stnxivan, Judge, presiding.
    Heard in the Branch Appellate Court at the March term, 1913.
    Reversed and remanded.
    Opinion filed March 10, 1914.
    Statement of the Case.
    Action by United Breweries Company, a corporation, against Q-. Bernard Anderson, administrator of the estate of Alfred Kinell, ■ d Edward Swartz, for the conversion of certain saloon fixtures which the undisputed evidence in the record shows the plaintiff owned. The verdict was for defendant and the judgment against plaintiff for costs. To reverse the judgment, plaintiff prosecutes a writ of error.
    Abstract of the Decision.
    1. Tboveb and convebsion, § 38
      
      —admissibility of evidence. In an action for the conversion of certain saloon fixtures, evidence that the defendant’s intestate took out two fire insurance policies on the property in his lifetime, held to amount to nothing more than self-serving declarations, and incompetent on issue of ownership.
    2. Limitation of actions, § 120
      
      —when question whether statute had run should not be submitted to jury by instructions. Where the undisputed evidence shows the statute of limitations has not run, it is error for the court, under its instructions, to leave to the jury as a matter of fact whether it had run.
    3. Municipal Coubt of Chicago, § 29
      
      —when rules of court not presented for review. Appellate Court cannot take judicial notice of a rule of the Municipal Court as to the practice in such court with reference to objections, to oral instructions, where such rule does not appear in the record.
    The testimony in plaintiff’s behalf was in substance that it owned said fixtures and that it allowed Alfred Kinell, since deceased, to use them as long as he purchased its beer; that such arrangement was in force when he died; that Anderson, after the administration of the estate, took possession of the property and inventoried it among the assets, and refused to deliver up the same to plaintiff on its demand, and subsequently sold it to defendant Swartz.
    Rubens, Fischer & Mosser, for plaintiff in error.
    Anderson, Anderson & Anderson, for defendants in error.
    
      
      See Illinois Notes Digest, Vols. XI to XV, same topic and section number.
    
   Mr. Justice Barnes

delivered the opinion of the court.