This appeal was heard during four days, and over 400 pages of testimony were taken before the judge who presided at the hearing. We have read it all carefully, with the aid of the elaborate arguments of counsel, and are so well satisfied with the opinion of the Presiding Judge and his conclusions of law and fact that we might well dismiss the exceptions without more. The estate of the testator, however, is very large, and the case was argued in behalf of the appellant with such zeal and ability by his learned counsel that we shall add a few words in support of what the judge in the first instance has so well said, though we do not propose to discuss in detail the numerous eases decided by our Supreme Court upon the subject of confidential relationship. The courts abstain from laying down an exact and comprehensive definition of what constitutes confidential relationship. Briefly, we may say that it arises prima fade, and it may seem as matter of law, where the testator and the beneficiary who has to do with the making of the will are trustee and cestui que trust, attorney or scrivener and clerk, physician and patient, clergyman and parishioner, master and servant, or the like, where, in other words, there is trustfulness on one side and a dominating influence on the other, which destroys the free agency of the testator; as was said in Leedom v. Palmer, 274 Pa. 25: “In some cases, the confidential relation is a conclusion of law, in others it is a question of fact to be established by the evidence.” In the present case, our examination of the testimony convinces us that no confidential relationship, in its legal sense, existed between Llewellyn and Swartly. They were indeed intimate friends and had been so for many years; so much so that the learned counsel for the appellant compared them in his argument to David and Jonathan; but it would be more proper to say that Llewellyn, the elder man and patron of Swartly, had greater influence over him than had Swartly over the other. They were like brothers and closer to one another than many brothers are,
We add a few words regarding the pleadings in the case.
The petition filed by the contestant and sworn to by him averred squarely that Llewellyn, at the time of the execution of the will and codicil, “was not a person of sound and disposing mind, memory and understanding, but, on the contrary, was of unsound mind and incompetent to execute any paper in the nature of a last Will and Testament;” and this averment was as squarely denied in the answer. This, then, is one of the issues raised by the pleadings, and yet, when counsel for the contestant opened the case at the hearing, he confined his contention to this, that.the will was secured by undue influence exerted upon the decedent by Swartly. At the hearing, not a vestige or scintilla of testimony was produced to impugn Llewellyn’s testamentary-capacity, and the proponent, under the pleadings which raised the issue, produced a mass of testimony which proved, without the slightest doubt, that the testator was fully competent to make a will. We have had other cases where such allegations have been made without any substantial foundation, much as an old pleader in actions of trespass would round out his declaration with an averment that the defendant had committed “alia enormia,” and we think
The exceptions to the appeal are dismissed, and the appeal from the Register of Wills is dismissed and the record is remitted to the Register of Wills.
