Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

97 Tenn. 217

Pratt v. Gillespie

Tennessee Supreme Court

Decided September 19, 1896

Tennessee Supreme Court · decided 1896-09-19

<p>1. Supeeme Court. Bill of exceptions.</p> <p>This Court cannot, on the hearing of a law case, look to the evidence, though copied into the transcript, unless it has been made part of the record by bill of exceptions. (Post, pp. 218, 219.)</p> <p>Cases cited and approved: Bank v. Lowe, Meigs, 225; MeKeel v. Bass, 5 Cold., 151; Railroad v. Roster, 88 Tenn., 671; Marble Co. u. Black, 89 Tenn., 119; State v. Hawkins, 91 Tenn., 140.</p> <p>Cited and distinguished: Stadler v. Hertz, 13 Lea, 318.</p> <p>2. Same. Presumption in absence of bill of exceptions.</p> <p>In the absence of a bill of exceptions showing the evidence submitted in the Court below, this Court presumes conclusively that it was sufficient to justify the judgment rendered. (Post, p. 219.)</p> <p>Cases cited and approved: Kincaid v. Bradshaw, 6 Bax., 102; Phillips v. Phillips, 5 Lea, 451; Scruggs u Heiskell, 95 Tenn., 455.</p>

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““In the absence of a bill of exceptions showing the evidence submitted in the court below, this court presumes conclusively that it was sufficient to justify the judgment of the trial judge.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Dispeker v. New Southern Hotel Company

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1896-09-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently May 1998

12 state decisions

7018961900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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 →

Caldwell, J.

¶1William Gillespie sued E. W. Jenldns and M. A. Pratt before a Justice of the Peace, the warrant reciting that the action was based upon a promissory note. The Justice of the Peace rendered judgment against both of the defendants, and Pratt appealed to the Circuit Court. The presiding Judge of the latter tribunal tried the case without a jury, and pronounced a judgment against Pratt for $275.65 and costs. Pratt has appealed in error to this Court. He insists upon a reversal of the judgment below because, as he contends, “the note sued on is not signed nor indorsed by him, nor is there anything in the record to connect him with it in any way.”

¶2If it be true that Pratt neither signed nor in*219dorsed the note, and that he was not otherwise connected with it, he ought not to be required to pay it. But what the real facts in that behalf are, this Court is unable to learn, there being no bill of exceptions in the case. It is true that what seems to be a note, made by E. W. Jenkins and Mattie Jenkins to William Gillespie, and with which Pratt does not appear to have any connection, is copied into the transcript before us, yet we cannot consider it, because it is not made a part of the record by bill of exceptions. Union Bank v. Lowe, Meigs, 225; McKeel v. Bass, 5 Cold., 151. To the same effect are the later cases of Railway Cos. v. Foster, 88 Tenn., 671; Marble Co. v. Bloch, 89 Tenn., 119; State v. Hawkins, 91 Tenn., 140, and other cases therein cited.

¶3The case of Stadler v. Hertz, 13 Lea, 318, is not in conflict. The Court held in that case that a note made ' the basis of a bill in equity and “filed as evidence,” became a part of the record without a bill of exceptions, but that holding was expressly placed upon a rule of chancery practice which has no application in a Court of Law.

¶4In the absence of a bill of exceptions, showing the evidence submitted in the Court below, this Court presumes, conclusively, that it was sufficient to justify the judgment of the trial Judge. Kincaid v. Bradshaw, 6 Bax., 102; Phillips v. Phillips, 5 Lea, 451; Scruggs v. Heiskell, 95 Tenn., 455.

¶5Affirmed.

/97/tenn/217 · .json · Public domain