Court Opinion

ID: 9584289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:46:29.280575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:27.107554
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J.,
dissenting.
The majority says, “The simple issue in this case is mental competency.” I disagree. At this appellate stage of the proceeding, the real *857question is whether there is credible evidence to support the jury’s conclusion on the issue of competency.
This Court repeatedly has stated that when there is conflicting evidence on the issue of competency to make a will, the jury must determine that issue. And “where the case has been fairly presented and there is credible evidence to support the conclusion reached by the jury, neither the trial court nor this court may disturb the verdict.” Eason v. Eason, 203 Va. 246, 253, 123 S.E.2d 361, 366 (1962). Furthermore, when, as here, a jury verdict has been rendered in favor of the contestants and has been approved by the chancellor, the contestants are entitled on appeal to have the evidence considered and accepted in the light most favorable to them. Lewis v. Roberts, 207 Va. 742, 744, 152 S.E.2d 44, 45 (1967).
I submit that the three-member majority in this case has failed to apply both of the foregoing basic rules of appellate review. I think there was credible, substantial evidence to support the jury’s finding of fact that Maude L. Thomason lacked testamentary capacity at the time the will was executed.
For example, the testimony of Faye Wells is particuarly strong in support of the contestants’ position. Wells, the decedent’s granddaughter and a minister’s wife who was “very close” to her grandmother, said she saw the testatrix “on or around” the day the will was executed and testified twice that she “was in very poor mental condition.” Wells said that based on her conversations with and observations of her grandmother “in 1973,” she was “sure” the decedent could not understand the language contained in the will.
In addition, the witness Scearce, who had known the decedent for 30 years, testified that immediately before and after the March 1973 hospitalization, the testatrix did not recognize Scearce. She said that upon discharge from the hospital Mrs. Thomason’s mind “just wandered” and that “I would get to talking to her, and she would want to know who I was and what I was doing there.”
Also, the witness Mathews, who was a “next door neighbor” of the decedent for 20 to 25 years, stated that she saw Mrs. Thomason “a lot of times” during March of 1973 and that the testatrix did not recognize her. Mathews testified, without objection, that in 1973 the decedent would have been unable to “think about her property,” to “think about her beneficiaries,” to “think about what she was doing,” and to “relate all three of these items together.”
The preceding excerpts are representative of the abundant testimony in the record that supports the verdict. This is a classic case in which competent, conflicting evidence, presented in an impartially conducted *858trial with proper instructions, renders the jury’s finding of incompetency “inviolate against disturbance by the courts.” Smithey v. Refining Company, 203 Va. 142, 145, 122 S.E.2d 872, 875 (1961). For these reasons, I would affirm the judgment below.
CARRICO, C.J., joins in this dissent.