Admission

' 1.

Receiving: reception. Whence admit, admissible, inadmissible, nonadmission. Used of assenting to, allowing, or receiving— a claim, a will to probate, any other writing, or testimony. Also applied to making a person a member of a privileged class or body, as of the legal profession, or of a partnership or association.

See Delectus.

2.

Recognition as fact or truth; acknowledgment, concession; also, the expression in which such assent is conveyed. In evidence, applied to civil transactions, and to facts, in criminal cases, not involving criminal intent.* In pleading, what is not denied is taken as admitted. Direct or express admission. An admission made openly and in direct terms.

Implied admission

Results from an act done or undone; as, from character assumed, from conduct or silence.

Incidental admission

Is made in another connection, or involved in some other fact admitted. Judicial or solemn admission. So plainly made in pleadings filed, or in the progress of a trial, as to dispense with the stringency of some rule of practice. ' The Plymouth, 3 Wall. 34-35 (1865), cases.

2 New England Ins. Co. v. Dunham, 11 Wall. 1 (1870). "Dupontde Nemours v. Vance, 19 How. 171 (1656); The Clement, 2 Curtis, 366 (1855). * Exp. Byers, 32 F. R. 404 (1887), Brown, J.

Partial admission

In equity practice, delivered in terms of uncertainty, with explanation or qualification.

Plenary admission

Without any qualification.! Admissions are treated as " declarations against interest " and, therefore, 'probably true. In the absence of fraud they bind all joint parties and privies.* The credibility of an admission is a question of fact. The admission of a right is not the same as of a fact. All the words must be considered. May be by a document, conduct, predecessor in title, agept, attorney, referee, joint party, trustee, officer, principal, husband, wife.^ Where the act of the agent will bind the principal, his admission respecting the subject-matter will also bind him if made at the same time, and constituting part of the res gestae.* But an act done by an agent cannot be varied, quali Hed, or explained, either by declarations, which amount to no more than a mere narrative of a past ' occurrence, or by an isolated conversation held, or an isolated act done, at a later period. The reason is, the agent to do the act is not authorized to narrate what he had done or how he had done it, and his declaration is no part of the res gestae.^ For example, the declaration of the engineer of a train which met with an accident, as to the speed at which the train was running, made from ten to thirty minutes after the accident occurred, is not admissible against the company in an action by a passenger to recover damages for injuries sustained. " His declaration, after the accident had become a completed fact and when he was not performing the duties of engineer, that the train, at the moment the plaintiff was injured, was being run at the rate of eighteen miles an hour, was not explanatory of anything in which he was engaged. It did not accompany the act from which the injuries in question arose. It was, in its essence, the mere narrative of a past occurrence, not a part of the res gestae — simply an assertion or repre sentation, in the course of a conversation, as to a matter not then pending, and in respect to which his authority as engineer had been fully exerted. It is not to be deemed part of the res gestae simply because of the brief period intervening between the accident and the making of the declaration. The fact remains that the occurrence had ended when the declaration in question was made, and the engineer was not in the act of doing anything that could possibly affect it. It his declaration had been made the next day after the accident, it would scarcely be claimed that it was admissible evidence against the company. And yet the circumstance that it was ihade between ten and twenty miiiutes — an appreciable period of time — after the »

See I Greenl.

Ev. §§ 194-211; 1 Chitty, PI. 600. ' 1 Greenl. Ev. § 169. ' See Whart. Ev. Ch. XIU. * Story, Agency, § 184. See also 1 Greenl. Ev. g 113. 'Packet Company v. Clough, 20 Wall. 540 (1874), Strong, J.; American Life Ins. Co. v. Mahone, 21 id.

157(18741; Barreda v. Silsbee, 21 How. 164-65 (1858), accident, cannot, upon pr Woiple, make this 6ase an exception to the general rule. If the contrary view should be maintained^ it would follow that the declaration of the engineer, if favorable to the company, would have been admissible in its behalf as part of the res gresice, without calling him as a witness — a proposition that would find no support in the law of evidence. The cases have gone far enough in the admission of the subsequent declarations of agents as evidence. against their principals. These views are fully sustained by adjudications in the highest courts of the States." Contra. " As the declaration was made between ten and thirty minutes after the accident, We may well conclude that it was made in sight of the wrecked train, in the presence of the injured parties, and whilst surrounded by excited passengers. The engineer was the only person from whom the company could have learned of the exact speed of the train at the time.. It would seem, therefore, that his declaration, as that of its agent or servant, should have been received." '* The modem doctrine has relaxed the ancient rule that declarations, to be admissible as part of the res gestae, must be strictly contemporaneous with the main transaction. It now allows evidence of them when they appear to have been made under the immediate influence of the principal transaction, and are so connected with it as to characterize or explain it.... What time may elapse between the happening of the event.. and the time of the declaration, and the declaration be yet admissible, must depend upon the character of the transaction itself... The admissibility of a declaration, in connection with evidence of the principal fact, as stated by G-reenleaf, must be determined by the judge according to the degree of its relation to that fact, and in the exercise ot a sound discretion; it being extremely difficult, if not impossible, to bring this class of cases within the limits of a more particular description. The principal points of attention are, he adds, whether the declaration was contemporaneous with the main fact, and so connected with it as to illustrate its character." i See Acquiescence; Compromise; Confession, 2; Declaration, 1; Demurrer; Estoppel; EvinENCE; Part, 1; Silence. ' Vicksburg & Meridian E. Co. v. O'Brien, 119 U. S. 99, lOM (Nov. 1, 1886), oases, Harlan, J.; Bradley, Woods, Matthews, and Gray, JJ., concurring; Waite, C. J., Field, Miller, and Blatchford, JJ., dissenting,— opinion, pp. 107-9, by Field, J., citing, as in point, the declaration of the engineer and the ruling in Hanover R. Co. V. Coyle, 55 Pa 396, 402 (1867). And see Northern Pacific E. Co. v. Paine, 119 U. S. 560 (1877); N. J. Steamboat Co. v. Brockett, 121 id. 649 (1887). " The true rule is correctly stated by Greenleaf, with its limitations." Darling u. Oswego Falls Manuf. Co., 30 Hun, 279, 280-83 (1883), cases. See further, as to res gestae. Little Eock, «fec. B. Co. v. Leverett, 48 Ark. 338-43 (1886), cases — declaration by injured brakeman; Keyser v. Chicago, &c. E. Co., Sup. Ct. Mich.