Court Opinion

ID: 3294678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:11:30.237587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:08.587801
License: Public Domain

As the writer of the former opinion filed in this cause, and in view of the fact that we have reached a different conclusion from that arrived at on the former consideration of the case, I deem it proper to explain that in the original consideration I was misled by the lack of clearness of the record as to the action of the court with respect to certain evidence to which objections were, in my opinion, well taken, and which I conceived to be, in view of the slightness of the proof against the defendants, sufficiently prejudicial to require a reversal of the judgment as to all the defendants. Upon a reconsideration of the rulings upon which the reversal by the former opinion was ordered, however, I find, as the present opinion shows, that the court struck out all the damaging portions of certain testimony to which objection was made and that, as to other testimony, which I held to be erroneous and prejudicial, no motion was made to strike it out after it had been given, although there was an objection made to it after it got into the record. As the main opinion shows, in such circumstances — that is, where a proper question elicits from a witness improper testimony — the remedy is by a motion to strike out such testimony, a mere objection to it not being sufficient to preserve the right of the objecting party to have the question so raised reviewed. Other rulings as to other testimony which appeared to my mind to be prejudicially erroneous are disposed of satisfactorily to me in the present opinion of the court.
I desire further to add that, after a fuller consideration of the case, I am still convinced that the judgment should not stand against the defendant, Fisher. While it appears that the three defendants were close friends and companions, and that Louis De Bock was also very friendly with Miss Fisher, it was not made to appear that the latter did or said anything calculated to cause an estrangement between the plaintiff and her husband, or that she had or entertained any feeling of animosity or unkindness toward the plaintiff. There is no evidence tending to show that Miss Fisher ever attempted to persuade Louis to desert his wife or ever said anything to Louis or any other person in the least derogatory of the personal character of the plaintiff. There is, in short, nothing in the evidence tending in the slightest degree to connect Miss Fisher with a conspiracy to which the defendants, De Bock, might have been parties, the object of *Page 303 
which was to cause a separation and divorce between the plaintiff and Louis De Bock. The fact that Miss Fisher was on intimate terms of friendship with her codefendants and Louis De Bock is without special significance in the absence of proof that she had committed acts or uttered words calculated to influence Louis against the plaintiff, and which were designed by her to cause the alienation from plaintiff of Louis' love and affection. There are, it is true, some circumstances from which the conclusion might justly follow that Louis De Bock and Miss Fisher were "in love with each other," but, conceding that to have been the case, there is no evidence showing or tending to show that Miss Fisher was responsible for that state of the affairs between them. In other words, putting it in the language of the main opinion, it was not made to appear but that Louis himself "was the wooer and not the wooed," and that but for what might have been, so far as the record discloses, his undue attentions to her, wholly initiated and persistently prosecuted by him, she would not have given him any serious thought as an unholy suitor for her affections. These observations are, of course, based upon the assumption that a reciprocal sentiment of love had developed between Louis and Miss Fisher, a fact as to which the evidence is by no means clear and convincing, since, after all, the evidence as to the relations between Louis and Miss Fisher and the sentiments they entertained for and toward each other is justly capable of the interpretation that their relations at all times were only those which commonly exist and are entertained between mere friends or between persons entertaining no thought of each other beyond that which is motivated by a mere ordinary sentiment of friendship.
But it is not necessary to discuss this matter further. I am satisfied, from a thorough examination of the record, that no case was made against Miss Fisher, and for the reasons stated in the main opinion I concur in the reversal of the judgment as to the defendant, Fisher, and in its affirmance as to the defendants, De Bock.
A petition to have the cause heard in the supreme court, after judgment in the district court of appeal, was denied by the supreme court on November 14, 1919.
  All the Justices concurred. *Page 304