45 Conn. 559 | Conn. | 1878
The defendant in this case attempts to bring before this court for review, by motion in error, founded on a bill of exceptions, a supposed mistake of the Court of Common Pleas, in receiving and rejecting certain matters of evidence offered during the trial.
In so doing we think he has mistaken his remedy; that he should have brought his case here by motion for a new trial. To adopt the language of Ellsworth, J., in giving the opinion of the court in Tolland v. Willington, 26 Conn., 581: “A writ of error or motion in error will bring up properly a revision of the declaration, pleadings and judgment, but not an error in receiving or rejecting evidence, or in the charge of the court. We notice it that a salutary rule of law may be preserved and followed.”
Prior to the year 1807 the mode of revising the decisions of the inferior courts was by filing a bill of exceptions and bringing a writ of error thereon. But as a writ of error was stricti juris and often reversed a judgment for the most trivial error, the judges in that year adopted a new rule, declaring that bills of exceptions should not thereafter be admitted, but that motions for new trials should in all cases be substb tuted for them. 3 Day, 29. And from that time to the present bills of exceptions have been put under the ban of
In thus prescribing the same'remedy for erroneous decisions in the courts of common pleas as in the Superior Court, to be taken in both cases directly to the Supreme Court' of Errors, and in thus making important rights of the adverse party to depend on the form of remedy prescribed, the long established and well known rules of practice governing such motions were virtually adopted by implication. But in order to remove all possible doubt on this subject we find in the
