Case Name: Howell vs. Hamilton
Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: Kentucky
Decision Date: 1837-10-21
Citations: 5 Dana 554
Docket Number: 
Parties: Howell vs. Hamilton.
Judges: 
Reporter: Kentucky Reports
Volume: 35
Pages: 554–555

Head Matter:
Howell vs. Hamilton.
[Mr. J. T. Morehead for plaintiff: no appearance for defendant.]
From Bracken County Court.
October 21.
The son-in law of a guardian is not a suitable per son to be a commissioner to settle the guardian s accounts; but the fact that one of the commissioners is so related to the guardian, is not, per se, sufficient cause for rejecting the report; yet it should induce extraordinary vigilance in scrutinizing it.
Every item of a guardian is acct should be supported by a voucher or some other satisfactory evidence of its correctness. If the evidence is not reported, the settlement should be rejected, and the accounts again referred.

Opinion:
Chief Justice Robertson
delivered the Opinion of the Court.
John M. Howell, for himself and others, as wards of John Hamilton, excepted to a report of a supplemental settlement of their guardian's accounts, and moved a recommitment on two grounds: first—because one of the two commissioners was the son-in-law of Hamilton; and, second—because no proofs or vouchers were exhibited to sustain the credits allowed by the report.
But the County Court, having overruled the motion and adjudged the report sufficient, admitted it to record.
The question presented by this writ of error, is whether, in proceeding as just stated, the County Court erred.
It was certainly far from being prudent for the son-in-law to act as a commissioner in auditing the guardian's accounts. And the fact that he did so, should alone .have prompted the County Court to scrutinize the report with a jealous vigilance, and require indisputable evidence of its perfect impartiality and justice. Had there been such evidence, however, the mere propinquity subsisting between the guardian and one of the auditors—not rendering the commissioner legally in competent—would not have required a rejection of the report.
But there being, according to the import of the bill of exceptions, no extraneous evidence, either documentary or oral, in support of the credits allowed to the guardian, or even in justification of the apparently small and almost nominal charges made against him for rents; it was the duty of the County Court, in the exercise of the intelligent and prudent discretion which should ever characterize a tribunal entrusted with the guardian care of infants, to sustain the exceptions to the report, and commit the settlement to commissioners altogether exempt from any delusive bias or suspicion of prejudice.
Wherefore, the order of the County Court is annulled, and set aside, and the case remanded, with instructions to quash the report, and to recommit the settlement to commissioners indifferent as between the parties concerned.