Court Opinion

ID: 9815557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 02:10:41.204334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:01.209249
License: Public Domain

On Application for rehearing.

Per Curiam.

This cause now comes before the court upon the motions of the appellee for a rehearing and for a remand to the trial court for a new trial.
In support of these motions, it is said that no motion for judgment was made by the appellants at the conclusion of all the evidence, and, therefore, the court did not rule upon the question and cannot be said to have erred in that respect. It is argued that, for that reason, this court can not in any event render final judgment. By interpreting the opinion herein as reversing the judgment of the Probate Court on the weight of the evidence, it is said that the jurisdiction of this court is limited to reversing the judgment and remanding the cause for a new trial.
Now, in our opinion, a motion for judgment at the close of the evidence was unnecessary and would have been superfluous. The cases relied on are cases in which the trial court had not been called upon in any way to pass upon the question urged on appeal. They were actions at law or suits in equity, whereas this is a special proceeding.
In this case, there was only one question. The executors had included these stocks in the inventory. By so doing, they asserted they were assets of the estate. The appellee, by her exceptions, disputed that assertion. That was the issue submitted to the Probate Court. The inventory and exceptions presented that issue. The court decided that issue. This court certainly had jurisdiction to review that decision, notwithstanding no motion was made by either of the parties,
*138Having authority to review, the court had jurisdiction to reverse. Then the only question remaining is whether the cause should have been remanded for a new trial.
The appellee misinterprets the opinion herein. The language used is a paraphrase of the language of the Supreme Court of Ohio in Bolles v. Toledo Trust Co., Exr., 132 Ohio St., 21, 4 N. E. (2d), 917, in which it reversed and entered final judgment. At page 30 it said: “But we are equally satisfied that there is not that quantum of positive evidence to show necessary compliance with the mandates of the law respecting the consummation of a gift. In other words, the evidence as a whole does not present the clear and convincing details of a gift accomplished — a complete severance of the ties of ownership by the donor with absolute and irrevocable finality.” The court then directed that final judgment should be entered. That was the meaning intended by the different words used in the opinion herein.
Shortly after the Supreme Court had handed doAvn its decision, the appellee filed a lengthy motion to modify the judgment and an application for a rehearing on the identical grounds urged by the appellee in this case. In the motion the appellee said: “In the absence of a jury, to raise this question it was necessary for the defendant executor to demur to the evidence and request the court to enter judgment in its favor at the close of all the testimony. But this was not done then or at the close of the plaintiff’s case.” And, also, it was said therein: “Since the trial court Avas not asked to do the equivalent of directing a verdict for the defendants, and was not in the motion for a new trial asked to enter judgment for the defendants, it had no right to do so, committed no error in not doing so * *
In the opposing brief, it was pointed out that a hearing on exceptions to an inventory in the Probate Court was a special proceeding, to which the rules of the Code of Civil Procedure had no application, and that, where it affirmatively appears on the record that a final judgment should be rendered for one or the other of the parties, it should be so rendered.
The subsequent history of the Bolles litigation makes clear that this question was not an inadvertence on the part of the *139Supreme Court. In Bolles v. Toledo Trust Co., Exr., 136 Ohio St., 517, 27 N. E. (2d), 145, the court decided that the judgment on the exceptions to the inventory (132 Ohio St., 21) was res judicata and estopped the widow from claiming the same property as beneficiary of a trust, but in 144 Ohio St., 195, 58 N. E. (2d), 381, 157 A. L. R., 1164, the court held that it did not estop her from claiming her distributive share upon her election not to take under the will.
In the case at bar, it affirmatively appears from the undisputed facts that appellants are entitled to final judgment. We are of the opinion that the proceeding authorized by Section 2115.16, Revised Code, providing for exceptions to an inventory, is special, and that the rules regulating actions at law and suits in equity are inapplicable.
For these reasons, the motions are overruled and final judgment is entered for the appellants.

Judgment accordingly.

Hildebrant and Matthews, JJ., concur.