Court Opinion

ID: 9825898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 14:16:41.166042+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:27.911260
License: Public Domain

Smith, J., (on rehearing). In the brief of counsel for appellee in support of the petition for rehearing--it is insisted that we erred in holding that the error complained of was one that could have been corrected on the first appeal, and in support of this contention the case of Foohs v. Bilby, 95 Ark. 302, is cited. We do not concur in the view of counsel that the case cited has any application here. The Foohs case was a law case; the instant case is one in equity. Upon appeal from the circuit court we do not try the case de novo. We only rqview the errors assigned. In chancery appeals we do try the cause de novo, and, having done so, we enter here the decree which, in our opinion, should have been rendered by the court below; or, in certain cases, we remand the cause with directions to the court below as to the decree to enter. In certain exceptional eases permission is granted to take additional testimony in the court'below. But whatever the order -of this court may be in a chancery appeal, the finding of this court is based upon a trial de novo here. In the first appeal, reported in 164 Ark. 498, the entire case was before us, and, after a trial de novo, we entered the decree which, in our opinion, should have been rendered in the court below. We held that the administrator had been erroneously denied certain credits which should have been allowed him,' and we modified the decree by allowing these credits, but in all other respects the decree was affirmed. One of the questions necessarily involved on the appeal was the date from which the interest should have been calculated. The chancery court had adjudged that interest should be calculated from the date of the decree in that court; at least the decree so recited. The insistence now is that this was not in fact the decree of the chancery court, and that that court has the right to correct the decree to conform to the adjudication which was in fact made. But, as we have said, the whole case was before us for a trial de novo, and the date from which interest should be calculated was a question necessarily involved' in the appeal. We affirmed a decree which recited that the interest should be calculated, not from the date of the approval of the administrator’s settlement in the probate court, but from the date of the decree of the chancery court from which the appeal was prosecuted. It is now insisted that it appears, from the testimony taken on the motion in the court below to correct this decree, that interest should properly have been computed from the date of the administrator’s settlement when he was ordered to pay over the funds in his hands to his successor. It was within our jurisdiction to so decree, and we might have done so, had the matter been called to our attention, but it was not, and the effect- of our decree was to affirm that part of the decree appealed from which fixed the date of the decree as the period from which interest should be calculated. The decree of this court on the first appeal has •become final, and it is now beyond the. power either of this court or the chancery court to correct it. We adjudicated this question on a trial de novo, and this adjudication, even though erroneous, is final, and the motion for rehearing will therefore be overruled.