Court Opinion

ID: 9636913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:49:23.24549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:51.336758
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
ANDERSON, Circuit Judge.
Defendant’s learned counsel have presented a lengthy petition and argument for rehearing which, on analysis, comes in the main to a reiteration of their original contentions. In the interest of accuracy, a single correction should be made in the opinion of tho majority of the eourt.
This court has never been able to obtain an adequate equipment of Porto Rican statutes and reports. Our library is unequipped with the Revised Statutes and Codes of 1902. Hence the statutes cited in tho opinion hearing upon the rights of natural children wore from the Revised Codes of 1911, and contained in section 193, paragraph 4 (ante, page 526) the provision, originating in the amendment of March 9, 1911, that when the recognition of a minor is not made at tho time of recording the birth, the approval of the appropriate District Judge with the concurrence of the fiscal shall be necessary; and on page 528, ante, the failure to obtain such official approval is stated as the second of three reasons why tho recognition of plaintiff by the negro barber is no bar to the maintenance of the present action. The second reason is obviously not necessary to the result reached; it should be regarded as struck out.
The statutes of controlling significance in this case were the same prior as subsequent to 1931. The gist of tho action is for damages. This defendant cannot set up theoretical rights (abandoned if ever existent) of the alleged pseudo father as a bar to the wrong alleged to have been done by bis fraudulent concealment of his own paternity and avoidance of its resultant obligations.
The petition for rehearing must he denied, as neither of the two judges joining in tho prevailing opinion desire a rehearing. Rule 29.