200 Pa. 235 | Pa. | 1901
Opinion by
There was no allegation by the appellant of any fraud on the part of the appellee in connection with the execution and delivery of the notes upon which this suit was brought, and there was no evidence to cast suspicion upon his conduct in procuring them. Whether they were given for loans made at the time of their execution, or in renewal of others that had been so given, made no «difference in the liability of the estate of the deceased to pay them; and the offers which are the subject of the second and third assignments, to show the pecuniary circumstances of the parties, were irrelevant and calculated only to mislead the jury. If there had been any evidence of fraud in procuring the notes, the offers ought to have been allowed; as there was none, they were properly refused: Hartman v. Shaffer, 71 Pa. 312. “ But surely it is not to be inferred from this that wherever a plaintiff brings an action for goods sold and delivered or money lent and advanced, or paid, laid
The first assignment of error must be sustained. Even if the appellee was not required to prove the execution of the notes because, as he contended, the appellant had not denied under oath, as required by the rule of court, that they bore the genuine signatures of the deceased, the admission of the plaintiff’s statement as a piece of evidence in the cause was as novel as it was clearly wrong. The purpose of offering it was said by the plaintiff to prove the execution of the notes. If their execution was admitted, no proof was required; if it was not admitted, the plaintiff could not offer them in evidence until he had properly shown that they had been signed by the deceased. Plaintiff’s statement, offered in evidence, contained copies of the notes and was signed by counsel, but not even sworn to by the plaintiff. It alleged that “ Sythera B. Humes, during her lifetime, promised to pay the same to the plaintiff, but did not do so.” All of this was read to the jury and naturally regarded by them as legitimate evidence of the liability of the decedent. It is hardly required of us to say that we cannot conceive how an offer of a statement like this, even in a contest between living parties, could be seriously made as evidence of the defendant’s liability; but, when it is admitted and read to a jury to fix the liability of the estate of the dead to a living plaintiff, the court’s sanction of it as evidence is glaring error. The rule under which the appellee now con
The judgment of the court below is reversed and a venire facias de novo awarded.