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10 Ohio Cir. Dec. 259

Spaulding v. Allen

Cuyahoga Circuit Court

Decided November 20, 1899

Cuyahoga Circuit Court · decided 1899-11-20

<p>HEIRS — ERROR.</p> <p>Caldwell, Hale and Marvin, JJ.</p> <p>Heirs may Prosecute Error Though not Parties To Judgment.</p> <p>The provisions of sec. 6098, Rev. Stat., authorizing the heirs of a deceased person, in an action against the administrator on a claim against the estate of such deceased person, “to make any defense to such action which such administrator or executor could make,” carries with it the right to institute and carry on proceedings in error.</p>

Decided 1899-11-20

MARVIN, J.

¶1The motion to dismiss the petition in error in this case is overruled.

¶2Suit was brought by Allen and others, trustees, against the administrator of the estate of R. P. Spaulding, deceased, upon a promissory note indorsed by the decedent.

¶3The administrator had allowed the claim as valid. The heirs at law of the decedent, in pursuance of the provisions of sec. 6098, Rev. Stat., after proper proceedings in the probate court, filed an answer to the petition setting up defenses to the claim. The result, upon trial, was favorable to the plaintiffs and judgment was rendered for plaintiffs against the administrator.

¶4The plaintiffs in error are the heirs at law who made the defense; they are not parties to the judgment.

¶5We hold that the provisions of the statute which authorize the heirs in such action “to make any defense to such action which such administrator or executor could make, ” necessarily carries with it the right to test the regularity of the proceedings in the trial court, in the same manner as the administrator or executor could do, and this includes the right to institute and carry on proceedings in error.

¶6Suppose the court had overruled a demurrer filed by these heirs to the petition, and had been clearly wrong, or had sustained a demurrer to their answer and had been clearly wrong, to hold that the heirs might not proceed in error to have such wrong righted would cut them off from that which the statute clearly'gives them, viz.: “To make any”— every — “defense to such action which such administrator or executor could make.”

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