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51 Mo. 109

McClure v. Farthing

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided October 15, 1872

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1872-10-15

cited Revely vs. Skinner, et dl., 83 Mo. Rep., pages 98 and 99; 5th Howard, P. R-341. In the “ agreement” there is no admission that the plaintiff’s case was proved, or that any fact on which it depended was true. ' The sense of the agreement is “ that the witnesses would swear in this case as in the one just tried’,’ not that plaintiff’s witnesses had proved a singly fact. The case of Revely vs. Skinner, 33 Mo., p. 98, is not therefore in point.

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Decided 1872-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1941

8 state decisions

3018721880189019001910192019301940decided

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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Bliss, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2Some of the defendants in this cause were minors and answered by guardian ad litem, and during its pendency the attorneys for the plaintiff and for the other defendants, made an *110agreement in writing stipulating that “a final decree should be entered in the cause for the plaintiff upon the trial and evidence adduced in the other cause tried by the court, in which a decree was entered for plaintiff; the evidence and points of controversy upon the title being substantially similar.” It was farther stipulated that if the former decree should be reversed, that rendered in this cause should be set aside. A general judgment was rendered upon this agreement, against all the defendants, and afterwards the guardian ad litem, of the minors presented his motion to set it aside, as having been unauthorized by him and unwarranted by law, even had he given his consent, but the motion was overruled.

¶3A guardian ad litem has but one duty, and that is to defend the action. Revely vs. Skinner, 33 Mo., 98. It is un necessary to say that when there are several actions pending between the same parties, involving precisely the same facts, the guardian may not agree to submit the whole upon a single examination of witnesses, or, which is in effect the same thing, that the decision of one shall decide the whole. Such an agreement may be consistent with his duty, but that is not this case.

¶4The record shows that the agreement was made »by the attorneys of the other parties, who did not and could not represent the minors, and that it was made after the trial of the other cause, a cause not shown to have involved the same issues and evidence, but only evidence and points substantially similar.

¶5The motion should have been sustained, and the judgment overruling it is reversed and the cause remanded.

The other judges concur.
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