Court Opinion

ID: 6248896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-02-17 21:08:21.940254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:59:22.189329
License: Public Domain

Mestrezat, J.,
dissenting:
I concur in holding that the claim of the appellants is not res .judicata, but I do not agree with the majority of the court in holding that Henry Norris’s share in Fairhill passes entire to the trustees of Joseph Parker Norris, Jr., for the latter’s descendants. This, in my judgment and with deference to the views of the majority of the court, is a strained and artificial construction of the will, not warranted by the settled rules of interpretation, and manifestly defeats the intention of the testator. It gives force and effect to an assumed meaning of one part and disregards the explicit language of the other part of the very clause of the devise which passes the estate in controversy. It ignores equality among children, the primal thought of every parent, and creates a distinction among them without any apparent reason whatever, a direct violation of a universally recognized rule of construction. It gives the estate to the descendants of a discredited son to the exclusion of the descendants of other sons who were in equal if not greater favor with the testator.
I think it clear from the language used in this clause of the will and from the tenor of the entire instrument that the testator intended equality among his sons and their descendants in Fairhill, and that upon the death of either of the sons without issue his share should vest in the trustees, distributable among the remaining sons and the issue of deceased sons. The able and convincing opinion of Hr. Justice Shaeswood, concurred in by Chief Justice Thompson, in Horwitz v. Norris, *55960 Pa. 261, leaves nothing to be said in support of the conclusion of the common pleas in this case, and for the reasons there given I would affirm the decree of the court below.