Case ID: rawle_5/html/0114-01.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

[Philadelphia,
    February 9, 1835.]
    LEWIS against BAKER.
    IN ERROR.
    The inability of a witness to answer an improper question cures the error in allowing it to be put.
    Error to the Common Pleas of Delaware County.
    It was a feigned issue to try the validity of the will of Axariah Lewis.
    
    On the trial of the cause in the court below, Hannah Lewis, wife of Eli Lewis, was asked if her husband had told her at any time of a conversation he had with Robert Leiois, the plaintiff, about the will. The witness replied that he did tell her of a conversation with Robert Lewis. Mr. Tilghman, counsel for the plaintiff, objected to the witness stating what the conversation was. The objection however was overruled by a majority of the court, and the evidence admitted, to which admission the plaintiff excepted, and the court sealed a bill of exceptions.
    The witness proceeded to testify as to what her husband had said. He said “ Robert and him had had one of their long talks, when he came home. The reply he made was, it was a little masonry, and not for women to know. He believed it was Robert’s will they had been signing, and not uncle’s. He did not tell me the conversation between him • and Robert; nor I never knowed it, nor never asked him1 — not till since uncle’s death. Eli told me that night, he would not for a twenty dollar bill have put his hand to that paper.”
    The plaintiff in error assigned for error,
    1st. The majority of the Court of Common Pleas erred in allowing Hannah Lewis to testify and give in evidence the matters contained in the bill of exceptions.
    2d. The general errors.
    3d. The judgment below should have been entered in favour of the plaintiff.
    
      Tilghman, for the plaintiff in error,
    cited 1 Stark. 152, 334. 3 Stark. 1692. 4 Serg. & Rawle, 499. 3 Serg. Rawle, 269. 1 Stark. 148, 149.
    
      Kittera contra,
    referred to 11 Serg. Rawle, 362.
    
      J. R. Ingersoll in reply, referred to 1 Pow. on Dev. 643. 1 Phillips Ev. 421. 2 Caines, 178. Roscoe Ev. 96. 1 Phillips Ev. 212, 230.
   Per Curiam.

The objection made at the trial was a specific one, and directed against the introduction of the supposed relation by the witness’s husband, of the matter of a conversation had by him with the plaintiff about the will, and the objection being overruled, it came out that the witness had not been told what the •conversation was. Having said that her husband had told her ‘of a conversation with Robert Lewis,’ Mr. Tilghman objected to the witness’s stating what that conversation was; being allowed to relate it, she said, “He did not tell me the conversation between him and Robert, nor I never know’d it, nor never asked him till since uncle’s death.” Is not that the very case of Allen v. Rostain, 11 Serg. & Rawle, 362, where it was held that the inability of a witness to answer an improper question, cured the error in allowing it to be put? It is true the witness here, added other matters that were possibly inadmissible; but these were suffered to pass without exception, and they cannot be made the subject of error here.

Judgment affirmed.