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111 N.Y. 523

Burger v. . Burger

New York Court of Appeals

Decided December 11, 1888

New York Court of Appeals · decided 1888-12-11

April 19, 1887, which reversed, “ for error of fact,” a decree of the surrogate of Monroe county admitting to probate the will of John Burger, deceased, and directing a trial by jury of this question: “ Was John Burger of sound and disposing mind at the time the will in question was executed % ” The General Term had no power on the appeal taken from the surrogate’s decree to reverse the decree and order a new trial before a jury.

Relies on Porter v. . Smith

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-12-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently January 1923

14 state decisions

8018881890190019101920decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1I am inclined to agree in the result reached by the foregoing opinion, and to modify the doctrine of Angevine v. Jackson, so far as to hold that even in probate cases, and notwithstanding the supposed tenor of section 2545, an exception to a finding of fact is neither permissible nor necessary. In that action, nevertheless, our conclusion was correct, because no case was made and settled and signed by the surrogate, as the Code explicitly commands (§ 2576), when the appeal is sought to be taken upon the facts; and the papers did not show that the whole evidence was returned, as the General Terms have required by decisions which we have approved. (Spence v. Chambers,39 Hun, 193; Porter v. Smith,107 N.Y. 531.) While I thus agree that an exception to a finding of fact is not essential to a review of the facts, I am not yet sure that, by attacking the facts, one may review and reverse the final conclusions of law without any exception taken to them, or some of them; or that an exception to such conclusions of law has no wider effect on an appeal to the General Term, where the facts are open to review, than we *531 have given it on appeal to this court, where the findings are, in general, conclusive. These questions are not involved in the case at bar, as presented for our consideration, and, while the law may be as intimated, I prefer to reserve a final judgment upon them till they are necessarily presented.

¶2All concur with ANDREWS, J.; FINCH, J., concurring in result.

¶3Appeal dismissed.

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