155 Mich. 26 | Mich. | 1908
The bill of complaint, filed to foreclose a real estate mortgage, sets out, and the, answer of defendants admits, the execution, date, amount, and terms of the note and mortgage. There is in the bill an averment of the amount due and unpaid. The answer denies that this sum is unpaid, and asserts that there is unpaid a much smaller sum. And in the cross-bill of defendants it is affirmatively asserted that at the time of filing the bill there was only the smaller sum unpaid, which sum defendants had tendered and had demanded a discharge of the mortgage. At the hearing it was objected to the introduction of evidence of a payment claimed to have been made by defendants that there was lack of affirmative averments of payments in the answer. Like objections are urged in this court. The cause was heard upon the merits, and, at the conclusion of the hearing, counsel for defendants asked permission to amend the answer. The decision was upon the merits. We think the answer, fairly interpreted, avers that the amount of the note and mortgage had been reduced by payments or by a payment, and, while it would have been more correct pleading to set up the facts in detail, it is clear there was and could have been no surprise and no doubt concerning the real issue. There is nothing indicating that the court below would have refused permission to amend if defendants’ contention had been sustained.
Defendants claimed that on March 5, 1902, they paid $300 on the mortgage debt. Whether they did this is
*29 “A diary made by a person must be considered when in court as a self-serving statement of events, and, while it is proper to consider it and give it such weight as it should be given in the determination of questions of fact, yet the court must never lose sight of the fact that it is a self-serving act.”
It is to be noted that the book was not used at the hearing as an aid to the recollection of a witness, nor was it claimed or assumed that it was more trustworthy than the present recollection of witnesses. Neither of the defendants professed that they had not exact, independent memory of the narrated facts. Quite the contrary. Mrs. Clark had indeed no knowledge that the money had been paid by her husband, except that she claims he told her he had paid it, and she on the evening of the day in question made the written narrations in the book; nor is the book one of accounts kept in the usual course of a business. It is the settled law in this State that such evidence under such circumstances will not be received. Weaver v. Bromley, 65 Mich. 212; Collins v. Shaw, 124 Mich. 474. See 1 Wigmore on Evidence, §§ 734-738. Appellants are therefore not in a position to complain that the court considered the evidence aided by such arguments as were presented by counsel. It would benefit no one to review in this opinion the other evidence. Numerous independent facts calculated to affect belief were proven. The case is one of those in which the manner of the witnesses is likely to aid the court in arriving at a correct conclusion. The record and the briefs of counsel have been carefully examined, with the result that we are unable by any fair analysis of the evidence to reach a conclusion other than the one embodied in the decree.
We are not satisfied that the payment was made, and therefore affirm the decree, with costs to complainant.