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240 So. 2d 606

Docket No. 45938.

Jackson v. Walker

Mrs. Vera E. JACKSON v. Mrs. J.P. WALKER, Sheriff & Tax Collector.

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 26, 1970.

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1970-10-26

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“"`The failure to file this brief (by the appellee) is tantamount to a confession of error, and will be accepted as such and the judgment of the court below will be reversed, since an answer to the appellant's brief cannot be safely made by us, without our doing that which the appellee, by its attorney, should have done, i.e., brief the appellee's side of the case. This we are not called on to do, therefore the case falls within, and is governed by, W.T. Raleigh Co. v. Armstrong, 165 Miss. 380 , 140 So. 527 .'" [Quoting from Gulf M. & O. RR v. Webster County, 194 Miss. 660 , 13 So.2d 644 (1943)]. 204 So.2d at 852-853 .”

quoted by 4 later decisions, including Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp. v. Rogers, 298 So. 2d 676 - First Mobile Home Corporation v. Little

“Automatic reversal is not required where the appellee fails to file a brief. The appellant's argument "should at least create enough doubt in the judiciousness of the trial court's judgment that this Court cannot `say with confidence that the case should be affirmed.'" Where the appellant's brief makes out an apparent case of error, however, this Court is not obligated to look to the record to find a way to avoid the force of the appellant's argument.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including 813 So. 2d 753 - Conservator of Eldridge v. Sparkman, 767 So. 2d 277 - Graham v. Graham

Relies on W. T. Raleigh Co. v. Armstrong · United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. State ex rel. Tompkins

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1970-10-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently February 2015

10 state decisions

5019701980199020002010decided

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 →

¶1Sam P. Cooper, Jr., Picayune, for appellant.

¶2Entry of Appearance by L. Jack Stewart, Picayune, but no brief of appellee filed.

¶3GILLESPIE, Presiding Justice.

¶4The appellant filed a brief and an assignment of error. No brief was filed by the appellee. The case was submitted without argument.

¶5In United States F. & G. Co. v. State for Use and Benefit of Tompkins, 204 So.2d 852 (Miss. 1967), this Court stated:

The failure to file this brief (by the appellee) is tantamount to a confession of error, and will be accepted as such, and the jugment of the court below will be reversed, since an answer to the appellant's brief cannot be safely made by us, without our doing that which the appellee, by its attorney, should have done, i.e., brief the appellee's side of the case. This we are not called on to do, therefore the case falls within, and is governed by, W.T. Raleigh Co. v. Armstrong, 165 Miss. 380, 140 So. 527 (1932). (204 So.2d at 852-853).

¶6Since the appellant's brief in the case at bar makes out an apparent case of error, we do not regard it our obligation to look to the record to find a way to avoid the force of the appellant's argument.

¶7Reversed. Judgment rendered for the appellant.

¶8RODGERS, JONES, SMITH and ROBERTSON, JJ., concur.

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