Court Opinion

ID: 9864448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 13:08:51.283736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:19.197709
License: Public Domain

Smith, J. (on rehearing). We are asked to grant a rehearing in this case upon the ground that the action of appellant Hanorah Murphy in notifying the clerk of this court that she was no longer, interested in the appeal constituted an abandonment of it, and for the reason also that the action of appellant Mrs. Murphy in obtaining a divorce in St. Louis pending the appeal operated to dismiss her appeal, and that it should even now be dismissed for these reasons. A motion to dismiss the appeal was filed for these two reasons before the submission of the cause, but a response to this motion was filed denying its allegations, and no proof of the truth thereof was offered. There was no evidence .before us that appellant, Mrs. Murphy, had obtained a divorce pending her appeal, nor was there any evidence that she had notified the clerk of this court that she was no longer interested in the appeal and did not intend to prosecute it and our clerk denies that he was so notified. . On the contrary, she did prosecute the appeal with due diligence and to a successful conclusion. We now have filed with the petition for rehearing evidence of the fact that appellant, Mrs. Murphy, did obtain a divorce in St. Louis pending her appeal; but, as has been said, there was no evidence of that fact before us when the cause was submitted and decided. Rule III of this court, and the practice under it, does not permit a party to try his case in this piecemeal fashion. He must present all his defenses, or such as he relies upon, when the case is submitted for our decision, and he waives those which he does not present. Rule III provides that in no case will a petition for rehearing be granted “when based on any fact thought to be overlooked by the court unless reference has been clearly made to the same in the abstract of the transcript as provided by Bules IX and X.” Here, there could have been no reference to the fact that appellant, Mrs. Murphy, had been divorced pending her appeal, as the transcript contained no evidence of that fact. The parties to this litigation — -all of them — appear to have been trifling with the jurisdiction of our courts, and we know nothing to do with them except to spew them out and to have done with them; and to leave them where they were, so far as we are concerned, when the jurisdiction of our courts was first invoked. The petition for rehearing is, therefore, denied.