Court Opinion

ID: 9674621
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:31:58.288705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:28.606121
License: Public Domain

HARWOOD, Justice
(concurring spe- ■ daily).
While I concur in the conclusion that this judgment should be affirmed, I wish to set forth these additional views, with which a -majority of my confreres are not in accord.
The appellee’s efforts to testify as to his intentions to make Alabama his domicile were to a large extent prevented by the lower court’s rulings, although there was some testimony along this line, weak in probative force, brought in without objection. In the light of the decisions of this court pertaining to the so-called “Rule of Exclusion” the lower court of necessity had to rule as it did. Even so, such testimony as did come in without objection, under the doctrine of Levy v. Levy, 256 Ala. 629, 56 So.2d 344, and Volin v. Volin, 272 Ala. 85, 128 So.2d 490, cannot be considered because of the above mentioned Rule of Exclusion prevailing in Alabama. See also, Lorillard v. Lorillard, 272 Ala. 380, 131 So.2d 707. This rule, prevailing in no other jurisdiction, is to the effect that the uncommunicated intention of a party is a matter of inference to be drawn from facts other than the testimony of the party, even though such intention be material to the issues. This rule has been the subject of considerable discussion, much of it critical. I see no need to again write to the subject, but refer those interested to a thorough analysis of the rule by Judge J. Russell McElroy in 1 Ala.Lawyer 221; Wigmore on Evidence, 3rd Ed., Sec. I960; -and the dissenting opinion authored by Chief Justice Livingston in McGuff v. State, 248 Ala. 259, 27 So.2d 241. As demonstrated by the above references, the Rule of Exclusion is so glossed by exceptions, many being distinctions without a difference, as to render well nigh impossible the application of the rule with any degree of- certitude.
As it exists today the Rule of Exclusion is nothing more than a jurisprudential will o’ the wisp whose dim and evanescent light serves only to lead lower courts into the mire of reversal. Those adhering to the rule do so on the basis that it has been in our law too long and recognized in too many cases to now repudiate it. Judge McElroy has demonstrated that the rule was conceived in error. The writer does not adhere to the view that stare decisis envisions the perpetrations of erroneous and ún*206workable legal ipse dixits, and would extirpate this jurisprudential booby trap from our law once and for all.
Regardless of this total extirpation, the rule should certainly be extirpated insofar as its invocation prevents the testimony of a member of the armed forces seeking to establish the place of his domicile. Intention of the party is the sine qua non in showing domicile. The opportunities of one in the armed services is too hemmed about to ordinarily show this intent by objective evidence.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., concurs.