22 Md. 94 | Md. | 1864
delivering the opinion of this Court, after making a statement of .the proceedings and facts as ante, pp. 94, 95, proceeded as follows':
We find by an examination of these proceedings, that all the important questions presented, necessarily depend on the determination of the effect of the record, filed with the appellant’s answer, on the right of the appellee to enforce payment of the single bill, on which he rests his claim to relief. This record, marked Exhibit No. 2, A, shows that the appellee instituted a suit against Peter " Tabler, in Frederick County Court on the 25th of November 1844, to recover the amount of the single bill, which
The appellee, with an evident consciousness of the legal effect of this record on the cause of action exhibited, offered evidence to explain and qualify the entry of settlement, as well as to rebut the proper inferences therefrom; and the first question that presents itself, is, as to his competency to impeach collaterally, by any evidence whatever, the record thus produced as a bar to his claim. On this question we think the law. is well settled. Had the docket entry, shown by the certified copy of the record in question, been made in fraud or by mistake, it could have been corrected by a proper application to the Court in that case; but no suggestion either of fraud or mistake was made there, nor is there any such allegation here; and the question whether the entry so made can be collaterally explained and deprived of its proper legal effect, must depend entirely upon the established rules of law applicable to such cases. In legal contemplation the entry of “settled” was made under the eye and with the sanction of the Court, and in our opinion, it should be considered and taken here as a judicial act, and for that reason, as no longer open to question or controversy in any collateral proceeding. From considerations of sound public policy, as well as upon the authority of adjudged cases involving this question, we think the whole record, including the entry by which the cause was terminated, like all other judicial records when incidentally drawn in question, must be taken as absolutely
Decree reversed, and bill dismissed.