Court Opinion

ID: 9826754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 16:32:56.967724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:48:58.578745
License: Public Domain

On Petition to Eeheab.
A petition for a rehearing’ is filed herein and accompanying and a part of this petition is a request to now be allowed to suggest a diminution of the record. The paper offered as a missing part of the record is nothing more than an ex parte statement of the Clerk and Master dated since we handed down our former opinion herein. It is no part of the record.
There is affixed to the record a statement of the Clerk and Master — just before page one — which was made, he says, on order of the court. In this statement he says:
“Objection was made to the complainants appealing on the pauper’s oath, and John S. Wrinkle, solicitor for the complainants, agreed in open court that he would prepare the transcript of the record if appeal in forma pauperis was allowed, and upon this agreement the appeal was granted.
In the statement now asked to be filed he says:
“The appellants perfected their appeal by filing pauper’s oath on February 17, 1942; and' that no objection • or question was ever made by the appellee, S. E. Eymer, or his solicitor as to the right of the appellants to appeal upon the pauper’s oath.”
*185We have quoted these two excerpts from statements of the Clerk and Master, made at different times and apparently prepared by different individuals. Other parts of these statements conflict. We have merely referred to this matter trying.to illustrate the fallacy of placing statements of this nature in a record. Neither statement is a part of this record.. We have and are considering both statements along with counsel’s affidavit filed herein in our action on the motion to dismiss this appeal. Because this statement is no part of the record and no injustice can be done by denying it we must hold that under the rules of our court the request comes too late. See Rules Court Appeals, appendix to Code and appendix to 9 Tenn. App. Reps. Rule, 20.
The basis for the petition to rehear is that if the petition for diminution is granted that the record will then show that the delay was due to the negligence of the Clerk and Master. It is further argued that the delay .was acquiesced in by the appellee by his failure to appear before this court and move for an affirmance of the judgment below and in his delay of some sixty days in preparing an ex parte statement attached to the record.
By a careful examination of our original opinion it will be seen that we treated this appeal as “a simple appeal” as contradistinguished from ‘ ‘ an appeal in error. ’ ’ Rule 6 of this court as referred to in our original opinion classes both in the same category in so far as the rule is concerned.
We have again carefully examined this record and fail to find anything to indicate that the appellee acquiesced in the least'in this delay. We have carefully considered the authorities cited in this petition, many of these had been considered by us in the preparation of the original *186opinion, and we do not consider any of them applicable under the facts herein presented. The delay of the Clerk and'Master for “a few weeks” is not in question here. The delay complained of and on which onr opinion is based, is that of counsel for the appellants of over two years.
“It is the policy of this Court to endeavor to decide every appeal on its merits . . .”, says Judge Owen in Tennessee Coach Company v. Henley, 15 Tenn. App. 183. This certainly is still the policy of this Court and especially of the personnel thereof. But when a point is made, by the opposing party, of a long delay in doing what should have been done in such a short time, we must enforce some reasonable rules. In the absence of any definite rule on the subject we must adopt a reasonable attitude under the facts and circumstances of the particular case..
For the reasons herein set forth the petition is denied at the costs of the appellants.
McAMIS and HALE, JJ., concur.