Court Opinion

ID: 6122996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-02-04 20:09:58.558584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:24:02.908372
License: Public Domain

Sawtee, J.
(dissenting):
Without attempting to pass upon all of the numerous questions raised by this appeal, it is apparent that there must be a new trial for errors in the court below in the reception and rejection of evidence.
All of the parties to this action claim under George Webster as the common source of title; the plaintiffs under deeds executed by him; the defendants through Eleanor Webster, who claims under a receiver’s deed in proceedings supplemental to execution upon a judgment against George Webster, her husband. Both George and Eleanor Webster at the time of the trial were dead.
On the trial the plaintiffs offered in evidence a deed from George Webster and Eleanor Webster, dated April 30, 1859, to Simeon D. Webster, through whom plaintiffs claim as a part of their chain of title. This was objected to and the referee held it inadmissible under the pleadings, except to show a release of Eleanor’s inchoate right of dower, and confined its force and effect to that alone.
In the complaint the plaintiffs allege that the judgment under which defendants claim, had ceased to be a lien upon any real estate of. the said George Webster as against David Russell, a purchaser and grantee of George Webster, “ and as against Simeon D. Webster, a purchaser from the said David Russell, and also from the said George, by deed executed April 30, 1859, in good faith.”
These allegations we think amply sufficient to require the reception of the deed in evidence for all purposes, and that the limitation imposed and acted upon by the learned referee was error.
*43Again, the defendants called as a witness David H. Humphries, the grantee of the receiver, in the deed executed by him, and the grantor in the deed to Eleanor Webster, and under which conveyances the defendants claim title to the premises, in hostility to plaintiffs’ title, and offered tó prove by the witness communications made to him by George Webster in his life-time, tending materially to affect injuriously plaintiffs’ title and strengthen the defendants’. This evidence was objected to by the plaintiffs’ counsel, on the ground that the witness was incompetent under section 399 of the Code. The objection was overruled and the evidence received. Under the construction given to this section of the Code by the Court of Appeals, in Mattoon v. Young (45 N. Y., 696), and by this court, in Richardson v. Warner (13 Hun, ante, p. 13), the witness was clearly incompetent and his evidence inadmissible; he had owned and transferred the very title under which the defendants claim.
The findings of the referee show that this evidence must have materially affected his decision, and without passing upon the other questions raised, I am of the opinion that the judgment should be reversed, the reference discharged, and a new trial ordered, costs to abide the event.
Present- — -Learned, P. J., Boardman and Sawyer, JJ.
Judgment affirmed, with costs.