Baker v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 01 August 1892
• Citation: 15 S.E. 644,89 Ga. 486
• Parties: BAKER et al. v. THOMPSON et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

15 S.E. 644

89 Ga. 486

BAKER et al. v. THOMPSON et al.

Supreme Court of Georgia

August 1, 1892

Syllabus by the Court.

1. Where it does not affirmatively appear by official entries on the docket, or the papers connected with the case, that the justice's court which rendered a judgment on a given day other than a regular monthly court day was held from day to day or adjourned over by consent of parties, parol evidence tending to illustrate the question whether the court was legally in session when the judgment was rendered is admissible either to attack or uphold the judgment. A judgment rendered on a day when the court is not authorized to sit and transact business is a nullity, and leaves the case still pending, to be afterwards tried and disposed of.

2. Where interrogatories are taken by consent without commission in a justice's court, they will not be excluded on mere written objection to the same founded upon refusal of the witness to answer some of the cross interrogatories, it not appearing that any notice of the objection was given to the opposite party or his counsel, nor that the answers had not been in office for 24 hours before the trial.

3. The sole presiding magistrate in a justice's court cannot testify as a witness before a jury trying a case on appeal in the court over which he presides. The law makes no provision for administering an oath to him as a witness; he cannot be sworn before himself.

4. In a suit against two defendants, whether they are sued as joint promisors or as copartners, the plaintiff may recover against one of them severally. And where he disclaims in open court before the court and jury, any right to recover against both and claims that he has made out his case against one only naming him, his disclaimer as to the other being entered on the docket, a general verdict for so much, in favor of the plaintiff, is to be read in the light of such disclaimer, and is to be construed, not as a finding against both defendants but as a finding against that one to which the disclaimer does not apply.

5. Before the jury have dispersed, the presiding magistrate in a justice's court may send them out to correct their verdict by expressing therein the date from which interest on the principal sum found for the plaintiff is to be computed, this addition to the verdict being requisite to give proper certainty to the original finding.

Error from superior court, Bartow county; T....