Case ID: ill_14/html/0370-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Treat, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Daniel Woodward, Senior, Appellant, v. Daniel Woodward, Junior, Appellee.
    APPEAL PB.OM STARK.
    The submission and award of arbitrators upon the question of title to property in suit, on which the arbitrators did not pass, is inadmissible in evidence, even between the parties to the submission, and much more is such evidence inadmissible, when one of the parties litigant was no party to the submission.
    This was an action of replevin brought by the appellant against the appellee, in the Stark Circuit Court, and tried at the April term, 1852, Kellogg, Judge, and judgment rendered in favor of the defendant below. The question involved in the suit was the title to the mare and colt replevied. The plaintiff below appealed.
    O. Peters and M. Shallenberger, for appellant.
    J. Manning, for appellee.
   Treat, C. J.

This record presents the same question that arose in the case of Alfred Woodward v. Daniel Woodward, junior. This suit was between the plaintiff in replevin in that case and his father. The same property was in dispute in both cases. The real contest in that case, as in this, was whether the mare belonged to the appellee or his father. The submission and award were admitted in evidence in this case, as in that. We held, in the former case, that those proceedings were not competent evidence upon the question of title. They neither tended to show title in the appellee, or out of the father. They were not binding on the latter, because he did not authorize the submission, nor sanction what was done under it. Even if the reference had been. authorized by him, the award would still be inadmissible, because the arbitrators did not determine to whom the property belonged. They did not pass upon the title, but left that question entirely open. If the proceedings were not competent evidence in a suit between the parties to the reference, they clearly were not admissible against a third person. The father was not a party to them, and, of course, was not bound by them.

The judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded.

Judgment reversed.