Case Name: Elbert Day, in error, v. Martha J. McGinnis, Administratrix of James McGinnis, deceased
Court: Tennessee Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Tennessee
Decision Date: 1870-09
Citations: 1 Heisk. 310
Docket Number: 
Parties: Elbert Day, in error, v. Martha J. McGinnis, Administratrix of James McGinnis, deceased.
Judges: 
Reporter: Tennessee Reports
Volume: 48
Pages: 310–312

Head Matter:
Elbert Day, in error, v. Martha J. McGinnis, Administratrix of James McGinnis, deceased.
1. Evidence. .Parties as witnesses. The Act of 1867-8, c. 75, allowing persons interested in causes to be witnesses, did not take effect until it was put in operation by the Act of December 17, 1868, c. 7.
2. Same. Declarations. Evidence of what a deceased party said is not admissible to show that he had just been to a particular place and performed a particular act.
3. Statute. Takes effect when. Adjournment without day. An adjournment to a day certain, to hold a special session, does not put acts passed in operation until forty days from end of the latter session.
FROM HANCOCK.
Appeal in error from the Circuit Court, James P. Swann, J., presiding.
On the trial, a witness proved that the defendant came to the house of plaintiff and required him to take his gun and deliver it to one Perry Mills; and to show that he did so deliver it, the witness was allowed to state that he started out with the gun, saying that he was going to deliver it to Mills, and that he returned without the gun, and said when he returned that he had delivered it to Mills.
J. T. Shields, for plaintiff in error.
ifo counsel for defendant.

Opinion:
Tueney, J.,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
There is error in this record. The suit was commenced before a Justice of the Peace, from whose judgment an appeal was had to the Circuit Court of Hancock County. The subject matter of the suit is a riñe gun. The cause was tried in the Circuit Court on the 18th day of May, 1868. On the trial of the cause, the defendant in error offered to examine John McGinnis, a son of herself and of her intestate; the testimony was objected to, and the objection overruled. This was error. The Act of tbe General Assembly making competent as wit-r nesses persons in interest,, was passed March 13, 1868. There is no time provided in the Act for its going into operation, and there had been no adjournment, without day, of the Legislature passing the Act. On the 17th day of December, 1868, the same Legislature passed an amendatory Act, fixing the time at which the Act of the 13th of March should go into operation. The trial of this cause was between these periods. By section 162 of the Code, it is provided, "no general law passed by the General Assembly shall go into operation, or have any binding effect until the expiration of forty days after the adjournment without day, unless otherwise provided for in the act itself." It follows the witness was clearly incompetent.
The defendant in error was permitted to prove, over the objection of the plaintiff in error, that the intestate (in the absence of the plaintiff in error) said, on his return home, that he had delivered the gun to Perry Mills, to whom he had been directed by plaintiff in error, to deliver it. The declaration was no part of the res gestee; was wholly disconnected with tfye plaintiff in error, does not fall within the class of cases in which the declarations of a party are admissible as explanatory of his purpose and motive, and is obnoxious to the objection that the declarant- was making evidence for himself. In admitting this testimony, the Circuit Judge erred.
For these reasons the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial.