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79 Miss. 292

Davis v. Searcy

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1901

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1901-10-15

From the circuit court of Grenada county. HoN. James F. McCool, Special Judge. Davis, the appellant, was the plaintiff in the court below; Searcy, the appellee, was defendant there. From a judgment adverse to the plaintiff, he appealed to the supreme court. The opinion states the facts. 1. Two of the jurors were related to the defendant. This was unknown to plaintiff until after the verdict had been returned.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1901-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently March 1972

3 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.

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Terral, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2Davis sued Searcy on a note, to which Searcy pleaded non est factum. Two relatives of Searcy, not disclosing their relationship when asked, were impaneled, and sat upon the case. There being no evidence whatever in regard to fraud, the court instructed the jury that Searcy was not liable, even if he signed the note, if his signature was procured by fraud. The *294verdict of the jury was: “We, the jury, find for defendant, and assess the cost of court equally between plaintiff and defendant. It is our wish that, if this verdict will not stand, to enter a mistrial. ’ ’ And of these several matters operating to the prejudice of Davis, he predicates his appeal.

¶3We think the appellant has good cause for complaint upon the several grounds made by him. The relatives of Searcy were incompetent as jurors; the instruction of defendant, relieving him of liability for fraud (there being no fraud proven) was error, and the verdict of the jury was not a completed or absolute verdict. The jury expressly declared that if the costs were not equally divided they wished to enter a mistrial. And the evident meaning of the jury was that they found for defendant upon condition that their apportionment of the costs be accepted by the court, otherwise the finding to stand for naught. The verdict of a jury should be unconditional, and the result of its deliberate judgment, and manifestly this verdict is not of that character.

¶4Reversed a/nd remam,ded.

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