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157 La. 169

102 So 193

Stout v. Henderson

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided November 3, 1924

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1924-11-03

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1924-11-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently November 2013 · most notably Succession of Seals (1963), De Frances v. Gauthier (1951)

50 state decisions

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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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

O’NIELL, C. J.

¶1 (dissenting). It- was never intended that the authority of this court to review the judgments of the courts of appeal — which is a part of our supervisory jurisdiction — should ever be used to prevent the other court’s exercising its discretion. In this ease, to avoid injustice, and as a matter of equity, the Court of Appeal, in the exercise of its discretion, set aside a judgment taken by default, and remanded the case to allow the defendant a hearing on the merits of the case. No injustice could possibly have resulted from such a decree. If the plaintiff was entitled to a judgment, he would have obtained it after a trial of the case on its merits; if not, the decree of the court of appeal would have avoided an injustice. The decree of the' Court of Appeal did not end the suit; and it is not such a judgment or decree as was intended to be reviewed by this court. If the Court of Appeal had refused the defendant a hearing, we might be justified in reversing the decree. But we are not warranted, in the exercise of our supervisory jurisdiction, in substituting, for a decree which only tends to do justice, and which cannot possibly do injustice, and which does not violate any law, a decree which merely denies to a party his day in court, and which may therefore be a hardship.

¶2 The majority opinion and decree in this case is a bad precedent. I respectfully dissent from it.

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