94 Ala. 335 | Ala. | 1891
— This action was brought by the appellee, to recover money alleged to have been collected by appellant’s intestate on a note delivered to him by plaintiff' for collection. The defense interposed was, that defendant’s intestate owned the note. The single question presented on this appeal brings before us the ruling of the Circuit Court upon certain evidence. On the introduction of the plaintiff as a witness in her own behalf, she was asked, “Whether she had ever received any thing for the said note?” The defendant objected to this question, on the ground that it called for testimony as to a transaction with a deceased person — defendant’s intestate. The defendant duly excepted to the overruling of this objection, and he also reserved an excejxtion to the overruling of his motion to exclude from the jury the answer of plaintiff, in which she testified that “she had never received any thing on said note.”
The statute which relieves parties to civil suits from disability to testify on account of interest, has engrafted upon it an exception, “that neither party shall be allowed to testify ■against the other, as to any transaction with, or statement by any deceased person, whose estate is interested in the result
The application of these rules to the facts of the case at bar is decisive of the question we have in hand. The question asked the witness is too general to fall within the exception under consideration. To come within the prohibitory force of the exception, the testimony sought to be introduced must relate directly to some transaction with, or statement by the deceased adversary. It is not enough that an inference that could be drawn from such testimony would affect the estate of the deceased person. It is only by an inference drawn from the answer of the witness that one could conclude that ■defendant’s intestate had never received the note for collection, or had never paid plaintiff any thing for said note. Neither the question nor the answer relates directly to, or ■sheds any direct light upon any transaction with, or statement by defendant’s intestate. As well hold that plaintiff, as a witness, could not testify that she owned the note, because such testimony would inferentially contradict the defense interposed. And yet the ownership of the note is the basis of the right of recovery by plaintiff To hold that testimony of the character introduced in this case falls within the bar of the exception, would be to turn a rule, whose beneficent purpose
The Circuit Court did not err in its rulings upon the evidence.
Affirmed.