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24 Kan. 111

Pratt v. Kelley

Supreme Court of Kansas

Decided July 15, 1880

Supreme Court of Kansas · decided 1880-07-15

Error from, Norton District Court. At the May Term, 1878, of the district court, Kelley, as defendant, recovered a judgment against Pratt, as plaintiff, who brings the case to this court. The facts are.stated in the opinion.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““The court renders the same judgment on sustaining a demurrer to evidence, whether a jury has been impaneled or not. A trial proceeds in all respects, so far as applicable, in the same manner when the submission is to the court as when a jury is sworn; therefore the case of Gruble v. Ryus, supra, is in point.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Ardmore Oil & Milling Co. v. Doggett Grain Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1880-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently June 1924

9 state decisions

7018801890190019101920decided

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 →

¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Horton, C. J.:

¶2On January 5, 1871, a judgment , was obtained by the firm of Pratt & McGaffrey, against John Kelley, the defendant in error, in the district court of Page county, state of Iowa, for $344.12, and costs: This judgment was duly assigned to Louis K. Pratt, the plaintiff in error, and on November 24, 1877, an action was commenced *112on the judgment in the district court of Norton couuty, in favor of said Louis K. Pratt against said John Kelley. The defense was, the statute of limitations.

¶3The case was tried at the May term for 1878, to the court, a jury being waived. After the plaintiff had closed his evidence, the defendant interposed, and filed a demurrer thereto, upon the ground that no cause of action was proved. The court sustained the demurrrer, and rendered judgment for the party demurring. On May 23, the day after the cause was tried, the court adjourned to June 20, following. On June 20, the plaintiff filed and presented a motion for a new trial, alleging that the decision was not sustained by the evidence, and was contrary to law. This motion was overruled by the court, solely on the ground that the motion was not made within three days after the decision was rendered.

¶4We perceive no error in the ruling of the trial court. In Gruble v. Ryus, 23 Kas. 195, we held that in order to enable the supreme court to review the decision of the trial court •on the demurrer to evidence, it is necessary that a motion for a new trial should be made, and that it should be filed within three days after the decision is rendered. Counsel suggest that a demurrer to evidence, where the case is submitted to the court without a jury, is not within the statute. We think the position clearly untenable. The court renders the same judgment on sustaining a demurrer to evidence, whether a jury has been impanneled or not. A trial proceeds in all respects, so far as applicable, in the same manner when the submission is to the court, as when a jury is sworn; therefore the case of Gruble v. Ryus, supra, is in point.

¶5Again, it seems to be intimated, that as the court adjourned from the 23d day of May to the 20th of June, that the plaintiff was unavoidably prevented from presenting his motion within three days. This is a misconstruction of the law. The motion might have been filed during the recess of the court, and the statute would have been complied with. There was no necessity for delaying the filing of the motion to June *11320; in fact, this delay was fatal to the consideration of the motion on its merits.

¶6The order and judgment of the district court will be affirmed.

All the Justices concurring.
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