Booth Bros. & Hurricane Island Granite Co. v. Smith

• Decision Date: 06 June 1916
• Citation: 115 Me. 89,97 A. 826
• Parties: BOOTH BROS. & HURRICANE ISLAND GRANITE CO. v. SMITH.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

97 A. 826

115 Me. 89

BOOTH BROS. & HURRICANE ISLAND GRANITE CO.

v. SMITH.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

June 6, 1916.

Report from Supreme Judicial Court, Knox County, at Law.

Petition for a review of an action by Booth Bros. & Hurricane Island Granite Company against Albert W. Smith, administrator. Case reported. Petition denied.

Argued before SAVAGE, C. J., and CORNISH, KING, HALEY, HANSON, and PHILBROOK, JJ.

Littlefield & Littlefield, of New York City, and Frank H. Ingraham, of Rockland, for plaintiff. A. S. Littlefield, of Rockland, for defendant.

SAVAGE, C. J. This is a petition for a review of an action in which the present defendant was plaintiff, and the petitioner was defendant. That action was tried before a jury, and resulted in a verdict for Smith. The case was taken to the law court by the Granite Company on a motion for a new trial, and on exceptions. The motion and exceptions were overruled. Smith v. Booth Bros. & Hurricane Island Granite Company, 112 Me. 297, 92 Atl. 103. Thereupon the petitioner filed in this court a motion for a rehearing on the ground of alleged errors In the decision of the court. That motion was abandoned. In this state, there is no provision by statute or role for a rehearing by the law court after a decision rendered. Indeed, there can be no rehearing in cases where motions and exceptions are overruled. Such eases, after decision, go automatically to judgment, as of the preceding nisi prius term. R. S. c. 79, § 49. It is beyond the power of the court to recall them.

By this petition, the petitioner seeks to accomplish the purpose of a rehearing. The statute provides that:

"A review may be granted in any case Where it appears that through fraud, accident, mistake or misfortune, justice has not been done, and that a further hearing would be just and equitable." R. S, c. 91, § 1, par. 7.

The petitioner alleges as its ground for relief that "by inadvertence or accident an error was committed by said court (the law court) in overruling one of the exceptions" of the petitioner.

The right to a review is created by statute, and is limited to the causes specified in the statute. It may be questioned whether the statute, by proper construction, embraces the inadvertences, or accidents, or mistakes of the tribunal which has heard and decided the case. It might, perhaps, properly be held that the words "accident" and "mistake" relate only to the conduct and understandings or misunderstandings or misfortunes of the parties, to extraneous matters connected with the preparation and trial of the ease, and not in any sense to errors in the conclusions of the court, however caused. But for the present we have no occasion to say, and do not say. that there might not be a case of such palpable mistake in apprehending the evidence in a trial at nisi prius, or the record in a case before the law court, or such failure to consider them, as would bring it within the meaning of the statute. Ætna Life Insurance Company v. Tremblay, 101 Me. at page 590, 65 Atl. 22.

But it is certain that a petition for review cannot serve the purpose of a rehearing. It will not He for the purpose of seeking a revision by the court of its considered conclusions, either of fact or of law. Pickering v. Cassidy, 93 Me. 139, 41 Atl. 683. The conclusions of the court upon disputed issues of fact, or controverted questions of law, must be taken as decisive and unreviewable in that case. That courts err sometimes is sufficiently shown by overruled cases in every state. But when a case has been fairly heard and maturely considered and judgment rendered, it is for the public interest that litigation should cease, and that disappointed litigants should not be permitted to try their cases over again, and subject their adversaries to expensive and oppressive litigation. To delay justice is ofttimes to deny it. In Pickering v. Cassidy, supra, the court said:

"More mistakes in opinion or judgment are outside of the statute, where no data were accidentally overlooked. * * * Even if the court of last resort, without overlooking any data before it, draws erroneous conclusions in reasoning, its judgment should not for that cause alone be subject for reversal after having been deliberately rendered."

Interest reipublicæ ut sit finis litium. As we conceive it, if there be any ground for holding that an alleged erroneous decision of the law court may be cause for review in any, case, it is only when the court has by mistake assumed to be true what the record shows is not true, and its decision has been based upon the mistaken assumption, or has palpably failed to consider facts proved. When such a case comes before the court, the question will be considered further. We think no such error appears in this case.

The history out of which this controversy has arisen is fully stated in Smith v. Granite Co., 112 Me. 297, 92 Atl. 103, and need not be restated here. A brief résumé will suffice. The original suit was brought to recover for one-fifth of the stumpage of 12,000,000 blocks taken from a granite quarry in St. George. It was claimed that the defendant took them by trespass, but the action was in assumpsit, the trespass being waived. The court found that the plaintiff's intestate was the owner of a one-fifth interest in the granite in a farm once owned by Archelaus Smalley, and known as the "Smalley farm." The location of the northerly line of the "Smalley farm" was disputed. Smalley conveyed the granite on the farm in 1836. And in 1867, he conveyed by quitclaim deed all that part of the Smalley farm which contained the granite to John M. Fuller. The granite was excepted. In the meantime Smalley had become the owner of other land northerly of, and adjoining, the Smalley farm, and in his deed to Fuller he described the tract conveyed as bounded "on the north by other land of said Archelaus Smalley." Fuller died; and in 1888, one of his two heirs conveyed the tract to the other; and in 1889 John A. Fuller, the other heir, conveyed to the plaintiff's intestate by warranty deed all the land, at least, that was conveyed by Smalley to his father in 1867; and the deed may have included more, for by the description in the deed, the tract conveyed was bounded on the north by the southerly line of the Booth Bros. & Hurricane Island Granite Company's land. At the trial the Granite Company's title deed was not introduced and its southerly line was not shown. Had it been, it might have saved some trouble. In the warranty deed to the plaintiff's intestate the granite was not excepted. This deed gave the grantee a good title as against a trespasser. So that so far as this case is concerned, the intestate owned one-fifth of the granite on the Smalley farm, and all of the granite between the northerly line of the Smalley farm and the southerly line of the Granite Company's land, if there was any land between these lines. And the court was satisfied by the evidence that there may have been some; that is, that the 1889 warranty deed included some land to the north of...