White v. Riggs

Decided May 15, 1847

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1847-05-15

This was an appeal from a decree of the judge of probate for the county of Lincoln, approving an instrument as the last will of Benjamin Riggs, deceased.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““As the supposed decree was void, because the probate court had no jurisdiction, the appeal must be dismissed.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Waitt

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1847-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 1943

1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

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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¶1At a subsequent day in the same term, the opinion of the court was given orally by

Shepley J.

¶2It was said that the case found, that no public notice was given of the holding of a probate court at *117Georgetown, and that was not a place where probate courts were to be holden according to the provisions of the statute.

¶3The court could have no jurisdiction of the question there, and it is not pretended that the will was approved at any other place.

¶4The decree is not in the usual form, and does not on its face show that the court was legally holden ; and if it did, it was competent for the parties, as they have done, to agree upon the facts of the case, which show that the court had no jurisdiction.

¶5The acts of the defendant in appearing before the probate judge at Georgetown, and entering an appeal to this Court, could not give the court jurisdiction.

¶6As the supposed decree was void, because the probate court had no jurisdiction, the appeal must be dismissed.