29 A.D. 428 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1898
The plaintiff is an attorney at law, and he brought this action to recover the value of legal services which he rendered to the defend
_ But it is said that the plaintiff fabricated testimony in aid of his own case. The facts in that regard are, briefly, that when the plaintiff was preparing a memorandum of the services rendered, which was largely taken from his law register, he added to those entries in the register, which stated the fact of his retainer to defend the Gorman suits, that such retainer was made by Mrs. Gorman. These entries from the law register were used by him simply to refresh his recollection-as to the dates when the retainers were made. It was not claimed by him that the name of the defendant appeared upon these entries when they were made; and the entries themselves were not offered in evidence by him, or even referred to upon the trial, but were produced in pursuance of a demand made by the defendant, and were offered in evidence by her as a part of the plaintiff’s cross examination. This testimony, therefore, was not relied upon by the plaintiff, and was not presented to the referee for the purpose of sustaining the plaintiff’s case, but was simply a private memorandum made by him for his own information, which, had it not been put in evidence by the defendant after the plaintiff had stated that he had corrected the register according to what he claimed to be the fact, would have cut no figure in the case at all. These changes in the entries were, doubtless, considered by the referee, but they do not amount either to subornation or perjury, or to forgery, or to anything else which necessarily discredits the weight to be given to the testimony of the plaintiff upon other branches of his case. If the fact that a witness is discredited in one branch of his case operates to throw out his testimony entirely, then it operates against one party as well as against another; and the fact that the plaintiff was discredited as to the retainers to defend the Gorman suits has no greater weight against him than the fact that the defendant was discredited in regard to the testh inony as to the other transactions has as to her. In determining the case, then, there is no necessary inference of bad faith or dishonesty, as against either party, to be drawn from the fact that the referee discredited a portion of the testimony.
Patterson, O’Brien and Ingraham, JJ., concurred.
Judgment affirmed, with costs.