Case ID: walker_2/html/0497-01.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

LAW VS. KENNEDY AND WIFE.
    A Court may correct actual mistake iu entering a judgment after a full term has elapsed unless rights which have been acquired under the judgment would be affected.
    Error to Common Pleas of Allegheny County. No. 4 October Term, 1876.
    There was a verdict for plaintiffs followed by an argument for a new trial and on May 31st, 1875, the decision was entered on record as “new trial refused.” On June 8th, 1875, judgment was entered on the verdict. A fi. fa. was issued on June 8 and returned nulla bona ; an alias fi. fa. was issued on Sept. 23, 1875, and a levy made upon real estate of defendants. Sept. 25, 1875, defendants took a rule to vacate judgment as to Jane Kennedy, a married woman. There had been a plea of coverture in the suit. The Court made the following order: “October 9, 1875, the entry of May 31st, 1875, having been written “refused” instead of granted, as was intended, the said entry is now stricken off and a new trial granted.” A full term had intervened before the correction of the entry. Plaintiffs then took this writ of error and it was argued for them that the record was better than the memory of the Court. The power of the Court to open judgments rendered adversely ceases at the end of the term at which the judgment is entered; Mathers vs. Patterson, 9 Casey 487; King vs. Brooks, 22 Sm. 363; Breden vs. Gilliland, 17 Sm. 34; Stephans vs. Cowan, 6 Watts 511.
   The decision of the Court below was affirmed by the Supreme Court in the following opinion delivered on November 30, 1876:

Per Curiam.

The striking off the entry new trial refused was merely the correction of a mistake. It was not a re-judgment of the case after the lapse of a term, but merely the correction of a mistake made in the entry of the determination of the Court. Although after a judgment in a case the Court may not at any lapse of time revise its judgment and reach a different conclusion, it has it in its power to correct its own actual mistakes in the entry or the misprisions of its clerks, unless, perhaps, when rights have been acquired under the entry, which may be injuriously affected against equity. IIow far a Court may thus go, we do not undertake to indicate in what we have said, except so far as the facts of this case justify.

Order affirmed.