Court Opinion

ID: 9670128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:15:10.304342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:02.714883
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(dissenting). When this case was submitted (June 12, 1957) and decided (December 24, 1957), and when appellee’s official motion for rehearing was denied (April 14, 1958), Justice Souris was not a member of the Court and so has no knowledge of what took place during extended oral argument on submission day. Two members of the Court repeatedly requested that appellee (a veteran practicing attorney) disclose where, either in the printed record or in the original record, the Court might find evidence that he, appellee (defendant below), actually did move for a directed verdict during trial of this jury case. Reasons for such procedural inquiry appear in the Empson act (CL 1948, § 691.691 et seq. [Stat Ann and Stat Ann 1959 Cum Supp § 27.1461 et seq.]); likewise in our former decision (Fitzgerald v. Bixler, 350 Mich 688).
Queried thus, appellee was unable to and did not furnish any record or other evidence of the fact of such a motion, and so came our unanimous conclusion (pp 690, 691): “We find that the record before us fails also to disclose that any motion for a directed verdict was made by the defendant during trial.” That finding was and is concededly true in fact, and so the only question now is whether we are to change a decision, made on the archived record every laivyer knows must be the sole ■basis for appellate decision (see Court Rule No 65 [1945] * ), because, years later, the same appellee brings to us a record tending — so far as its face is concerned — to contradict the men*172lioned': original record and our quoted finding as to the content ..thereof.
For myself, I own to some little suspicion of a hitherto mysterious record thus dug up and would extend it no useful verity, especially when a timely motion >(~see Court Rule 72, § 1 [1945]), made between submission and decision in 1957, could and should have brought that record up for scrutiny and possible order to correct diminution of the original record. I prefer instead to stand upon our choieelessly compulsory rule that cases must come to appellate determination exclusively upon original records, as this one did in 19,57.
■ -I would .affirm, reversal of this case. Most certainly costs should be denied any party who, strikingly ;.as. here, has failed without excuse.t,o comply with o.ur appellate rules. '

 The printed reeord in this ease was filed December 19, 1956, prior to the effective date of the rule change. See 347 Mich xvii, xxxii. — • Repoeteb.