27 Conn. 459 | Conn. | 1858
We recently held, in the ease of Smith v. Lewis, (26 Conn., 110,) that it was not competent for a party, after a case had been reserved for our advice, to review, by writ of error, questions which were involved and decided by us on such reservation. Those decisions would of course embrace the subordinate points involved in those questions and upon which they must have depended. We think that that case should govern the present in regard to all the questions which have been now made before us, and that the decisions which we made when this case was reserved must be deemed to be the law of the case on this writ of error, although they would not preclude parties in other cases involving the same points from reviewing them. On reconsidering this subject we are confirmed in the opinion that Smith v. Lewis was correctly disposed of, and that any other course would be erroneous in principle and attended not only with much inconvenience but positive injustice. The practice of reserving questions of law by the superior court for the advice of this court has long prevailed, and been sanctioned by statute, and has admirably answered the purpose for which it was introduced. It was adopted for the purpose, among others, of relieving the former court and facilitating its business, and also for the benefit of its suitors by procuring in that mode in advance the opinion of this court on questions of difficulty or importance which might otherwise after the final determination of a case be brought before us by a writ of error, and thus settling, at the earliest practicable period, points arising on the trial of the case or in the previous stages of it, which otherwise could be reviewed only by writ of error, and where the reversal of the decisions on them would be attended with great, and as the event would prove, useless delay and expense already sustained, in addition to that which would be afterwards incurred by another trial of
But, independently of this objection, and supposing that the plaintiff in error is not precluded from re-arguing the questions sought now to be presented, and which we have before decided in this case on its reservation, we are of the opinion that those questions are not legally presented in this record, and for that reason also can not properly be examined on this writ of error. No error is claimed to exist in the proceedings of the superior court excepting such as appears on the former reservation of facts by that court for our advice. The plaintiff in error has assumed that that reservation is to be considered as a finding of facts by that court, and on which its judgment for the defendant below was rendered, and hence that such reservation is to be deemed to be a part of the record in the case. We think that this is an erroneous view of the subject. The facts stated in that reservation were not stated as a finding of the facts in the case, for the purpose of precluding the parties in regard to those facts as having been found of record, or of having it appear that the judgment of that court was founded on them, or that its judgment was a legal conclusion from those facts, but only for the purpose of informally presenting those facts, or the evidence of them, to this court, and taking our advice on the question whether they entitled the plaintiff to recover, and to guide the action of the superior court as to what judgment it should render in the case upon the issue presented on the pleadings in it; and that issue was only whether the defendants assumed and promised in manner and form as alleged jn the declaration. After such reservation that court continued the case only for the purpose of taking our advice, and
In order to guard against any misconception of the extent of the present decision, we would remark that we do not intend to express any opinion upon the point, whether a writ of error would lie from the judgment of a court, where, in an action at law tried by it on an issue of fact, it had found and placed on the record the facts proved on the trial, and it expressly appeared that, upon those facts, the ultimate fact involved in the issue formed and presented by the pleadings was found and judgment rendered. The present case, according to the view we have taken of it, requires no decision of that question.
For these reasons there is nothing erroneous in the judgment complained of.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
Judgment affirmed