94 S.E. 685 | N.C. | 1917
The action was brought to recover a parcel of land the ownership of which depended on the true location of the dividing (67) line between the parties who were adjoining proprietors. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant, and plaintiff appealed from the judgment entered thereon. The exceptions were all taken to the admission or exclusion of evidence. It will be necessary to consider only two or three of them.
1. Plaintiff proposed to show that the line had been run some years before the time of the trial by Posey Hyde, and that the respective owners had recognized it as the line of division between them for many years. This evidence was excluded by the Court, but we think it was competent, not to change the boundaries of the land (Davidson v.Arledge,
2. The defendant offered in evidence a map of "the Cherokee County, North Carolina, survey." It was admitted that this map was properly certified from the office of the Secretary of State, and no objection was taken to the map itself, as being a correct copy. But defendant proposed to prove the date of the actual surveys of tracts numbered 33 and 36, upon which the record of the surveys was based, by a *74 certificate of the date made by the Secretary of State to the effect that the surveys were made in the year 1837, as "drawn from the returns of deputy surveyors by R. Deever, P. R. S., S. R." The map was competent evidence, but a certificate as to the date of a survey, which appears upon the returns of the surveyor or deputy surveyor, is not competent to prove what was the date. The returns, if in his office, must themselves disclose their contents, and while the Secretary may certify to copies of documents filed in his office, under the law he cannot certify, independently and apart from the writing, to matter appearing on those papers.
The objections to this kind of evidence was well stated by JusticeMontgomery in S. v. Champion,
This power of an officer who is the keeper of certain public records to certify copies is confined to a certification of their contents as they appear by the records themselves, and the records must, therefore, (69) be so certified, for he has no authority, under the law, to certify to the substance of them, nor that any particular fact, as a date, appears on them. The exercise of such an authority, which is not conferred by the law, would be fraught with great danger.
There are other questions raised by the appeal which are worthy of *75 serious consideration, but as those we have considered must result in a new trial, we need proceed no further with the discussion.
New trial.
Cited: Woodard v. Harrell,