Case Name: William Turnbull, John Holker and Peter Marmie who survived Daniel Britt against James O'Hara
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1807-12
Citations: 4 Yeates 446
Docket Number: 
Parties: William Turnbull, John Holker and Peter Marmie who survived Daniel Britt against James O'Hara.
Judges: Brackenridge, J. afterwards consented to sit during the argument.
Reporter: Reports of cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Yeates)
Volume: 4
Pages: 446–455

Head Matter:
William Turnbull, John Holker and Peter Marmie who survived Daniel Britt against James O'Hara.
A judge at Nisi Prius, who determines a question of evidence, but reserves the point, is not precluded from sitting in bank on the argument.
Upon reserved points, argued with a motion for a new trial on the merits, the plaintiff’s counsel begins and concludes the argument.
The declarations of an agent may be given in evidence, to corroborate or discredit other declarations which have been proved; but what he has said not acting in his agency, cannot be received to establish any independent fact.
New trial will not be granted, where the cause is submitted to the jury on the credibility of testimony; nor where motion is founded on the discovery of evidence, which it was the fault of the party, that he did not produce at the trial.
Motion for a new trial, grounded on the merits of the case, and on two points reserved.
The cause was tried before Mr. Justice Smith, at a court of Nisi Prius held on the 2d December 1807, when a verdict passed for the plaintiffs for 27,707 dollars and 37 cents ; and two questions of evidence were reserved at the trial.

Opinion:
Tilghman, C. J.
declined sitting on the argument, having been concerned as counsel for the defendant, unless the same became absolutely necessary for the purposes of justice.
Brackenridge, J.
was also averse from sitting, having given testimony for the defendant on the trial, and from some peculiar circumstances existing between himself and Mr. Turnbull.
It was then insisted by the defendant's counsel, that Smith J. * -| *could not legally sit on the present argument; and the 44'-I case was compared to that of an appeal from the Circuit Court, in the decision whereof it was not competent to the judge who sat in the Circuit Court, to give an opinion.
But the chief justice declared, that the uniform practice both in England and this state had ever been, for the judges who had tried causes, to sit afterwards in judgment on the points reserved.