Court Opinion

ID: 9834519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:39:39.864698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:17.025379
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Both parties to this appeal have filed motions for rehearing. Appellees insist that, the trial court having found that the estate of John Buckley had been fully administered by Short and Dysart and that they had been discharged, a judgment should have been rendered in their favor for all of the property in controversy because the grant of a further administration thereafter was void. We may concede that this proposition is correct, but it is predicated upon the assumption that this finding of fact by the trial court is sustained by the evidence.
Appellants have assailed that finding as being unsupported, and we think their contention is justified by the record. The evidence upon which the trial court should have relied in passing upon that particular question is not what the probate court of Shelby county did as disclosed by the parol testimony adduced upon the trial, but what the lost records show that the court did. The testimony of the witness Parker as to what occurred in the matter of discharging Short and Dysart is not to be taken as a substitute for the record, except in so far as it purports to disclose the contents thereof. Ludlow v. Johnston, 3 Ohio, 553, 17 Am. Dec. 609, 631; 10 Enc. Ev. 842. In the case cited above the court uses this language, which is very appropriate in this connection: “But before the contents of a record can be proved it must be shown that it once existed and had been lost by time or accident. This shows that the evidence is not introduced to prove proceedings of a court as resting in parol, but as they once existed of record. But to introduce parol testimony to prove the proceedings of a court of record and then substitute this testimony for the record itself would be a novel proceeding.” This being a collateral attack upon the judgment of the probate court appointing Defee as administrator de bonis non, it was necessary to sustain appellees’ contention that the record of the probate proceedings in the administration of the estate of John Buckley *366should affirmatively disclose that that estate had been fully administered before Defee’s appointment was made. Such evidence has not been furnished. Hence we conclude that the judgment of the court was correct, ah though not in harmony with one of his findings of fact.
We do not base our affirmance of the judgment awarding appellees one-half of the land upon the finding of the trial court that Defee purported to sell only a one-half interest in the land certificate to Winslow. We are inclined to agree with appellants that this finding is not supported by the evidence. We base our affirmance of this portion of the judgment upon the general conclusion that the evidence, taken as a whole, sustains the trial court’s conclusion that no community debt existed at the time of this sale. It may be that the testimony supporting this conclusion is meager, but it is sufficient, we think, to overcome the presumption of fact arising from the mere lapse of time that the sale was made for the purpose of paying community debts.
The motions of both parties are overruled.