123 Ga. 320 | Ga. | 1905
1. The clerk of a court of record is the custodian of its records and files, and the certificate of this officer as to what is contained in the record must always be looked to, in preference to any other evidence. As to matters occurring during the progress of the trial, which are not of record or of file in the office of the clerk, the judge’s certificate will control. But when a bill of exceptions purports to set forth a copy of what is of record or of file, and the recitals therein are at variance with what is contained in the record duly certified by the clerk, the certificate of. the clerk will be looked to rather than the recital in the bill of exceptions. See Southern Ry. Co. v. Flemister, 120 Ga. 526, and cit.
2. The copy certified by the clerk appears to be a process issued by one as “clerk” who is in fact clerk of the superior court, bears test in' the name of the judge of that court, and requires the defendant to appear at the next-court to be held for a given county. The words “county court” do not appear at all in this copy; nor does the word “county” appear anywhere as a term descriptive of the court referred to. One upon whom such a process was served could not be misled. It was returnable at a time when a regular term of the superior court would begin. It was signed by a person as “clerk” who was the clerk of the superior court, and bore test in the name of the judge of that court, and no other court was mentioned or referred to therein. The next court to be held in that county on the day named could not have been understood by the defendant to be other than a court in which the clerk who signed the
Judgment affirmed.
