Court Opinion

ID: 9691115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:10:59.19356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:10.876522
License: Public Domain

On Application for Rehearing
LAWSON, Justice.
It is strenuously insisted in brief filed in support of appellee’s application for rehearing that we did violence to the spirit and purpose of Supreme Court Rule 37, as amended, Code 1940, Tit. 7 Appendix, when we extended the time for filing the transcript of record in this court, on appellant’s motion made prior' to submission, even though no application for extension of time had been made to the trial judge.-
In the original opinion we held in effect that there was a “good and sufficient reason” shown as to why appellant did not apply to the trial judge for an extension of time within which to file the transcript of record in this court. We did not, however, set out the facts and we are called upon to do so in the application for rehearing. We concluded from the numerous motions, .petitions, affidavits and from the supplemental transcript that the fact that counsel for appellant and the circuit clerk both were under the impression that neither the transcript of the evidence on the main trial nor the transcript of the evidence on the hearing of the motion for new trial had been filed in the office of the circuit clerk prior to December 28, 1956, was “good and sufficient reason” even though they may have been mistaken in that respect in that the transcripts of the evidence had been deposited in the office of the clerk prior to that time by the court reporter. We adhere to that conclusion. In adopting Supreme Court Rule 37, as amended, it was the purpose and intention of this court to give us the right to exercise our discretion in matters of this kind to the end that justice be done, and we did not intend to restrict our right to grant extensions óf time for the filing of the transcript of the record where there was no application made to the trial judge only in those instances where the circumstances existing made it difficult or impossible to apply to the circuit judge. The facts of each case must govern our action.
In the original opinion we did not expressly rule on the appeal from the judgment of the circuit court ordering corrections made in the transcript of the record theretofore filed in this court. In view of the fact that this judgment of the trial court followed a hearing wherein witnesses were examined orally before him, we are inclined to the view that that judgment should be affirmed and the costs involved in that supplemental proceeding should be taxed against the City of Athens, the appellant.
The appellee .in her brief filed in support of application for rehearing also questions our holding on the merits. We see no occasion to go into that question again. We gave serious consideration to the insistences made by able counsel for appellee*372in briefs filed on original submission. We could not agree with those contentions at that time and we do not agree with them now.
Opinion extended, judgment modified, application for rehearing overruled.
SIMPSON, STAKELY, GOODWYN and MERRILL, JJ., concur.