Court Opinion

ID: 9826822
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 16:43:47.17116+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:15.748154
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON PETITION FOR A REHEARING.
On a former day of the present term, the assignments of error in this ease were overruled and the judgment of the Circuit Court was affirmed, for the reason that, in order to dispose of the assignments of error, it was necessary to resort to the evidence in the case, and this was legally impossible because no part of the evidence was preserved as a part of the record by bill of exceptions or any method appropriate to an action at law.
Near the conclusion of the final minute entry in the cause below, and following the appeal, it was recited that “all the evidence having been offered in the form of depositions, exhibits and stipulations filed in the case, which are made parts of the record, no bill of exceptions will be necessary.”
This being a law case, tried in the Circuit Court under rules applicable to actions at law, we held that the evidence, whether it be oral or in depositions, must be preserved, for the purposes of the appeal, by bill of exceptions.
An earnest petition for a rehearing has been filed on behalf of the plaintiff in error, Ralph Lyon, by which a rehearing is sought on three grounds.
1. It is said, in substance, that where the reason fails, the rule fails, and, therefore, where, as in this case, the Court certifies in a minute entry, over his signature, that all the evidence was in the form of depositions, exhibits and stipulations filed in the case, and made parts of the record, there was no necessity for a bill of exceptions.
The practice thus advocated would constitute a delegation to the Clerk of the duty of determining what shall constitute the record. “It must not be left to the Clerk or other person to determine what constitutes any part of the record” (114 Tenn., 563, 568); but the authentication of all matters going to make up and constitute the record must be by the trial judge, and by him in the exercise and discharge of his judicial functions; and no one else can perform that service for him, nor can he delegate it to anyone else.” (117 Tenn., 698, 705).
The necessity for a bill of exceptions, in order to preserve the evidence for appeal in actions at law, is, we think, well settled by the *46authorities cited in our former opinion in this case. Some additional authorities are cited in Cosmopolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Woodward, 7 Tenn. App., 394, and in the notes to section 4693 of Thompson’s-Shannon’s Code.
2. Petitioner makes the further claim that chapter 94 of the Acts of 1929 (carried into the Code of 1932, sec. 10622, in modified form) “clearly implies that a bill of exceptions shall not be necessary except when the hearing below is upon oral testimony. ’ ’
The Act thus mentioned is entitled, “An Act to regulate the hearing of eases in the Court of Appeals,” and the concluding sentence jof the first section of the Act is, “the transcript before the Court of A.ppeals in cases tried in any lower Court upon oral testimony must contain motion for new trial and bill of exceptions.”
“In Hibbett v. Pruitt, 162 Tenn., 285, 292, 36 S. W. (2d), 897, the Court said that the provision above quoted no doubt related to appeals in chancery eases tried below on oral testimony; that it “would have been superfluous as to cases brought up from law courts,” as “the rule enacted was already well established in law cases.”
We find nothing in said Act of 1929 which, to our minds, supports an implication that the Legislature intended to thereby confine the rule, requiring that the evidence in actions at law shall be preserved by bill of exceptions, to cases tried on oral testimony.
3. Petitioner further insists that, if he is wrong in his contention that a bill of exceptions was not necessary, then a rehearing should be granted and the case should be remanded to the Circuit Court for a new trial pursuant to section 9054 of the Code of 1932 (Shan. Code, sec. 4905), which provides that “the Court shall also, in all cases, where, in its opinion, complete justice cannot be had by reason of some defect in the record, want of proper parties, or oversight without culpable negligence, remand the- cause to the Court below for further proceedings, with proper instructions to effectuate the objects of the order, and upon such terms as may be deemed right.”
In view- of the multitude of cases in which our Supreme Court has affirmed judgments of trial courts because the evidence was not properly preserved by bill of exceptions, and in not one of which (so far as we can learn) has there been a remand for a new trial under the authority of the Code section above quoted, we are constrained to hold, without discussion, that said Code section has no application to such a case.
It results that the petition for a rehearing is denied and dismissed at the cost of the petitioner.
Crownover and DeWitt, JJ., concur.