Opinion ID: 1888492
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: on motion to strike and on suggestion of error

Text: July 3, 1953 35 Adv. S. 13 65 So.2d 839 LOTTERHOS, J. Appellant has filed a motion to strike from the record certain parts thereof purporting to disclose what occurred during the argument of this case to the jury, concerning statements in argument by counsel for both parties, and also to strike certain language from our original opinion as not supported by the record. Appellant has filed with the motion a suggestion of error seeking, in effect, the same relief, and asserting that the cause should be reversed. Exception is thereby taken to that part of our opinion declaring that appellant's attorney told the jury in argument that any verdict rendered for appellee would have to be paid by appellant out of his wages, and that part using this supposed statement as a basis for the affirmance of the judgment. We have carefully reviewed the pertinent portion of the record in order to determine whether the exceptions are well taken. It appears that, immediately after the arguments to the jury had been completed and the jury had retired, counsel for appellant stated into the record his version of what had happened, and that after a brief colloquy the court said that a bill of exceptions would be allowed in accordance with the statements made by counsel. Appellant then made his motion for a mistrial, which was overruled. With reference to the bill of exceptions, the court stated that before signing it he would submit it to appellee's attorney. Thereafter on a subsequent day, appellee by her attorney submitted her proposed bill of exceptions, setting up her version of what took place during the argument, but the court declined to sign it. Appellee was permitted to make a record of the testimony in support of her version of what had happened. A statement by appellant's attorney was also included in the transcript. The court signed the bill of exceptions tendered by appellant, with slight modifications. There is an apparent conflict between appellee's proposed bill of exceptions (not signed by the court) and appellant's bill of exceptions (signed by the court), and between the statements of appellant's counsel and of the witnesses as shown in the transcript, with respect to whether counsel for appellant made the statement in argument to which exception has been taken. It is not for this Court to resolve disputes between parties or their attorneys as to what happened at the trial; that is a function of the trial court. We cannot properly consider what is set out in the unsigned bill of exceptions which appellee requested, nor weigh the testimony and statements which the trial judge heard in passing upon these matters. We must look only to the signed bill of exceptions in determining what was said in argument, for purposes of our decision. This conclusion is supported by the following cases: Pittman v. State, 155 Miss. 745, 124 So. 761; Geiselbreth v. Mississippi Power and Light Co., 166 Miss. 749, 147 So. 874; and Richardson v. State, Miss., 17 So.2d 214. Upon reconsideration by the Court of the matters under discussion, a majority of the judges are of the opinion that the bill of exceptions in this record is properly construed as showing, for purposes of this decision, that counsel for appellant did use the argument in controversy. Although the bill of exceptions reflects the questioned language only in a quotation from appellee's argument, which purports to be in answer thereto, yet there is nothing in the bill of exceptions stating or implying that the comment so made by the attorney for appellee, to the effect that appellant's attorney so stated, was false. Accordingly, it is our decision that the motion and the suggestion of error should be overruled. Motion to strike and suggestion of error overruled.