Brown v. Campau

• Decision Date: 12 April 1882
• Citation: 48 Mich. 145,11 N.W. 845
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: BROWN v. CAMPAU.

11 N.W. 845

48 Mich. 145

BROWN v. CAMPAU.

Supreme Court of Michigan

April 12, 1882

Mere irregularities in the entitling of papers will not be regarded as sufficient ground for reversal upon writ of error. Where the fact of agency is properly shown, evidence of the acts of the agent, on behalf of the principal and in the course of the employment, is not incompetent.

Where a referee does not otherwise overstep the duties imposed by law and practice, there is no objection to his making such adjournment of the hearing before him as convenience would seem to require. The allowance by the referee of leading questions cannot be reviewed by writ of error; the remedy, if any, is by an application to the circuit court to set aside the decision.

Conclusions of fact of referee held not subject to review.

Error to Wayne.

H. & H.E. Walbridge, for plaintiffs in error.

D.J Campau, Jr., and Moore & Moore, for defendant in error.

CAMPBELL J.

Mr Campau recovered a judgment in the circuit court for the county of Wayne against his niece, Mrs. Brown, on a referee's report, for services and disbursements on her behalf in defending her interests in a number of lawsuits partly on her sole account and partly where she was jointly interested. When the suit was first brought her husband was sued with her, but he died before the reference, and his death was suggested and discontinuance had against him. In the subsequent proceedings there was some carelessness of practice in the entitling of papers, and in some of them Mrs. Brown was mentioned as impleaded with Lafayette Brown. The writ of error was so made out.

So far as any objections of this sort are concerned, we do not think that it can be regarded as a fatal error to pursue the old common-law practice, although if judgment had been rendered against the husband during his lifetime, he might have had cause of complaint. But no one but Mrs. Brown has been held liable, and in Howe v. Lemon, 47 Mich. ----, [S.C. ante, 379,] where a series of similar slips had been made they were disregarded. Here, as there, the surviving wife has herself misentitled her own cause, and in the present case if strictness of practice were observed she would appear as sole plaintiff in error impleaded with a living person from whom there has been no severance, and therefore no right of separate proceeding. All of these matters we shall disregard.

A series of objections appear to...