Court Opinion

ID: 9735198
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:05:02.599538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.962544
License: Public Domain

SHINN, P. J.
I concur in the judgment. It appears to me that the trial judge was so concerned with the abstractions of procedure that he lost sight of the substance of what was before him. The question was simplicity, itself. Mrs. Clark was suing the representative of the estate of her deceased former husband to establish an interest in what she claimed was common or community property. Defendants, in resisting her claims, had a duty to produce all available evidence which tended to prove that portions of the property in question, or all of it, was the separate property of Mr. Clark.
It was shown to the trial judge that Mr. and Mrs. Clark had come to California from Massachusetts, where they had accumulated property; Stanley H. Farrington, “can state what property the decedent owned prior to coming to the State of California”; Farrington resides in Maine and his testimony will be material as to the character of the property involved.
Upon the showing made, which was not controverted, there was no latitude of discretion in the trial judge in ruling upon the application to take the deposition of Farrington. *869The defendants had as clear a right to obtain his testimony by deposition as they would have had to subpoena him as a witness if he had been within the jurisdiction.
On October 10, 1961, the opinion and judgment were modified to read as printed above.