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115 Ind. 113

Silver v. Parr

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided May 12, 1888

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1888-05-12

<p>Instructions to Jury. — Refusal to Give. — Presumption.—Where the evidence is not in the record, it will be presumed that instructions which the trial court refused to give, on request, were refused because not applicable to the case made by the evidence.</p> <p>¿Same. — Must be Signed by Judge. — PracUee.—Under the sixth clause of section 533, R. S. 1881, neither instructions requested by a party and refused by the court, nor those given by the court of its own motion, can be made a part of the record unless signed by the trial judge.</p>

Relies on Powers v. State · Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad v. Hedges · Baltimore & Ohio & Chicago Railroad v. Rowan

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-05-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently March 1955

9 state decisions

4018881890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Howk, J.

¶1This was a suit by appellant, Silver, against appellee, Parr, as defendant in a complaint of three paragraphs. The object of the suit was to recover damages which plaintiff claimed he had sustained by reason of the careless and negligent treatment he had received from defendant, who had undertaken, as a practising surgeon, to set the broken bones of plaintiff’s leg, and to attend to and cure and heal the same for a fee and reward, etc.

¶2Defendant answered by a general denial of plaintiff’s complaint. The issues joined were tried by a jury, and a verdict was returned for the defendant, and, over plaintiff’s motion for a new trial, the court adjudged that the defendant recover •of the plaintiff his costs herein, taxed at, etc.

¶3From this judgment plaintiff has appealed, and has here assigned as error the overruling of his motion for a new trial.

¶4The evidence is not in the record. The only grounds upon which plaintiff’s counsel rely for the reversal of the judgment below are (1) that the court erred in giving the jury certain instructions of its own motion, and (2) error of the *114court in refusing to give the jury certain other instructions, at the plaintiff’s request.

Filed May 12, 1888.

¶5So far as the instructions asked for by plaintiff and refused by the court are concerned, it is settled by our decisions that where, as in this case, the evidence is not in the record, it will be presumed here, in support of the ruling of the court below, that such instructions were properly refused, because they were not applicable to the case made by the evidence. Freeze v. DePuy, 57 Ind. 188; Powers v. State, 87 Ind. 144; Louisville, eta., R. W. Co. v. Harrigan, 94 Ind. 245; Baltimore, etc., R. R. Co. v. Rowan, 104 Ind. 88.

¶6The point is made by defendant’s counsel, and seems to be-well made, that none of the instructions, either those given by the court of its own motion or those requested by plaintiff and refused by the court, are properly in the record now before us, because, counsel say, none of such instructions were signed by the judge of the trial court.

¶7In the sixth clause of section 533, R. S. 1881, it is provided, among other things, as follows, to wit: “All instructions given by the court .must be signed by the judge, and filed, together with those asked for by the parties, as a part of the record.” This language of the statute is mandatory, and has been so construed by this court. Childress v. Callender, 108 Ind. 394.

¶8It has been held, also, that when it appears, as in the case-we are now considering, that the' instructions are not signed by the judge of the trial court, they do not become a part of the record. Chicago, etc., R. R. Co. v. Hedges, 105 Ind. 398.. We must hold, therefore, in the cause now before us that the-questions relied upon by plaintiff’s counsel for. the reversal of the judgment below are not properly presented by the-record for our consideration and decision.

¶9We have found no error in the record which requires the reversal of the judgment.

¶10The judgment-is affirmed, with costs.

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