Court Opinion

ID: 9649961
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:16:05.311754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:16.327260
License: Public Domain

Tapley, J.
Dissenting Opinion
The majority opinion of this court has now declared that the presumption of legitimacy may be rebutted by the declarations, admissions or testimony of the mother as to *252the non-access of her husband, therefore making it legally possible for the mother (in this case) to bastardize her own child. The majority of the court speaks in the following language:
“We do not lightly cast aside a rule of evidence which has never before been challenged by our court. But in the face of facts such as are apparent in the instant case where blind adherence to an illogical doctrine can result only in the ‘suppression of the truth and the defeat of justice,’ we are constrained to reconsider and abolish the rule. We now hold that both husband and wife may testify both as to his non-access to her and as to facts which tend to prove that access was impossible.”
This plaintiff, whose husband was serving in the armed forces outside the territorial limits of the United States, became pregnant with child and in a bastardy action charged the defendant, Franklin Bushey, with being the father of the child. She entered into an agreed statement of facts, the effect of which was to rebut the presumption of legitimacy and thereby bastardize her own child. This court has now said, by abolishing the Lord Mansfield Rule, that she legally may do so. I do not agree with this decision.
The weight of authority stands on the side of the Lord Mansfield Rule.
“The rule first laid down by Lord Mansfield that on grounds of public policy neither husband nor wife should be permitted to bastardize a child born in lawful wedlock by testifying to their own non-access with one another has been criticized by eminent authority, and has been expressly repudiated by at least one court, (n) but, in the absence of a statute to the contrary, is none the less established law in most jurisdictions---.” (n) Loudon v. Loudon, 168 A. 840 (N. J.) . 97 C. J. S.— Witnesses — Sec. 90 (a).
*253Many of the decisions of the appellate courts state sound reasons why the Rule is important to a well regulated society and therefore should be retained.
The reasoning of the Massachusetts Supreme Court is persuasive:
“The rule has been based on reasons of decency and policy, especially because of the effect it may have upon the child, who is in no fault. The policy of the rule has been severely criticized. See Wigmore on Ev. Secs. 2063, 2064. But it has been too long settled in this commonwealth to be changed by judicial decision.
“The libellee contends that to admit the evidence of her statement to the probation officer would be a circumvention of the Lord Mansfield rule. This we do not accept. The rule, where applicable, relates to the competency of a husband and a wife as witnesses as to nonaccess, and never has served to prevent the introduction of such evidence through other witnesses. Whatever its intrinsic soundness, it should not operate in a case to which a wife is a party to exclude her admission of extramarital intercourse. In England, where the rule originated, and where it has relatively recently been affirmed by a divided decision of the House of Lords (Russell v. Russell, (1942), A. C. 687), the libellee’s admission in the present case would be received to prove adultery, but not to prove the illegitimacy of the offspring.----Our conclusion has the fullest support from a recent decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. Monahan v. Monahan, Me., 46 A. 2d 706.” Sayles v. Sayles, 80 N. E. (2nd) 21, 22, 23 (Mass.).
The late Justice Thaxter, a former learned and scholarly member of this court, who wrote the opinion in Hubert v. Cloutier, 135 Me. 230, 231, 232, observed with sound reasoning as follows:
*254“The complainant at the time the child was conceived and born was a married woman; and the presumption is that such child born during wedlock is the child of her husband and legitimate. In early times in England such presumption was held to be conclusive, if the wife had issue while the husband, not being impotent, was within the four seas, that is, within the jurisdiction of the King of England. Co. Lift., 244; Rolle’s Abr., 358, tit. Bastard; Matter of Findlay, 253 N. Y., 1, 170 N. E., 471, 472; 7 Am. Jur., 636. The rigor of such doctrine has now given way to reason; and it is held that such presumption can be rebutted. It is, nevertheless, as Cardozo, Ch. J. says in Matter of Findlay, supra, ‘one of the strongest and most persuasive known to the law’ and ‘will not fail unless common sense and reason are outraged by a holding that it abides.’ Proof of the mother’s adultery is not in itself sufficient to rebut it.-----
“In the case now before us it was accordingly necessary for the complainant to prove non-access by her husband. The only evidence of any weight on this point is her own testimony to the effect that she and her husband had not lived together for two years. Without such evidence her case would fall. The respondent objected to its introduction. We think his objection was well taken.
“In 1777, Lord Mansfield laid down the rule in England that the testimony of neither husband nor wife could be admitted to show non-access by the husband, if the result would be to bastardize issue born after marriage. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘a rule founded in decency, morality, and policy.’ Good-right, ex dem. Stevens v. Moss, Cowp., 591. This doctrine has since been followed in England and by the vast majority of courts in this country. —
“The rule which we feel must be applied to this case has been criticized by very eminent authority. 4 Wigmore on Evidence, 2 ed., 381, et seq. It was, *255however, promulgated by Lord Mansfield, a very great and an essentially practical judge. It has been followed because it has appealed to the sober common sense of subsequent generations. Cases may be cited, real or suppositious, where it may work a hardship. The question, however, is not what may be the bearing of the rule on a particular problem, but whether by and large the enforcement of it is politic. The application of it prevents many unseemly contests over the legitimacy of children, and tends to keep inviolate those marital confidences, the disclosures of which arouse only disturbing suspicion and prove nothing.”
In Pennsylvania, In Re Finks Estate, 21 A (2nd), 883-889, the court said:
“It has become part of the substantive law of evidence in this state that the proofs necessary to rebut a presumption of legitimacy must be of the highest order---. In fact, in pursuit of a well established public policy, we have gone so far as to hold consistently that non-access cannot be testified to by either husband or wife in order to overcome the presumption of legitimacy.”
The Nebraska Court, in Zutavern v. Zutavern, 52 N. W. (2nd) 254, 260, had this to say on the subject:
“----that the presumption of legitimacy of a child born in lawful wedlock may not be rebutted by any information, the source of which is either the husband or the wife; and that all testimony of the husband and wife which has a tendency to prove or disprove legitimacy is incompetent. There is no doubt as to the existence of this rule of law. It was proclaimed more than a century ago in England and has been adopted and applied by many courts of this country. It is the rule in Nebraska.”
In holding that a husband or wife are incompetent witnesses to rebut the presumption of legitimacy, the Pennsylvania Court reasons thusly:
*256“In order to successfully rebut the presumption of legitimacy, the evidence of non-access or lack of sexual intercourse or impotency must be clear, direct, convincing and unanwerable----. Moreover, our public policy is so firmly established and so strong that the courts have repeatedly declared that ‘non-access cannot be testified to by either the husband or wife in order to overcome the presumption of legitimacy.’ ” Cairgle v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp., et al., 77 A. (2nd) 439, 442. (Emphasis supplied.)
The Lord Mansfield Rule has been applied for approximately 150 years and no rule of evidentiary law would survive this long unless its purpose was consistent with the sound principles of a good and honorable society. I am mindful of the necessity, in the administration of the law, that under some circumstances long established precedents must be overruled and new ones established in order to satisfy and conform to changed conditions. This I believe to be worthy and proper procedure. According to my view, the abolishment of the Mansfield Rule does not come within this category.
The rule laid down in the majority opinion allows either spouse to testify with reference to non-access. It is applicable to cases in which the husband and wife have resided in the same community as well as to those in which they have been separated by long distances. The evidentiary requirement under the rule set forth in the majority opinion is one of strictness. Nevertheless, the door will be opened to a great variety of legal controversies, characterized by Justice Thaxter in Hubert v. Cloutier, supra, as “unseemly contests,” over the legitimacy of children, which will in a vast majority of cases under those strict evidentiary rules result in no benefit to any litigant, but which will in all cases affect the lives and happiness of innocent children. I feel that the underlying reasons for the rule as set forth *257in Hubert v. Cloutier, supra, are as convincing today as they were when expressed in that opinion.
Justice Cardozo characterized the presumption as “one of the strongest and most persuasive known to the law.” It has been so described by many eminent jurists. There must be, and there is, sound reasoning and support behind such a strong presumption.
There is much in the presumption of legitimacy that sustains the dignity of the person and tends to preserve and strengthen the moral fiber of society. It should not be allowed to be destroyed by the mother of the child — the child for whom this strong and important presumption was created to protect.
When a mother, as in this case, testifies in a court of law, either as a witness or through the medium of an agreed statement of facts, that her child is a bastard, it does something adversely to the fine and more noble sensibilities of people and to the decency and morality of the community. Such procedure does violence to public policy.
I have given some thought to the argument that if the mother is not permitted to testify that an injustice will be done to her husband. That injustice can be minimized, if not entirely dissipated, by the introduction of evidence other than that of the wife which can be readily obtained, destroying the presumption and thereby testifying to the fact that he is not the father of the child.
For the reasons I have set forth, I am unable to concur with my fellow members of the court and, therefore, respectfully dissent.
Siddall, J., joins in dissent.