Davis v. Jones

• Decision Date: 31 December 1859
• Citation: 40 Tenn. 603
• Parties: J. H. DAVIS v. JOHN JONES.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

40 Tenn. 603

J. H. DAVIS

v.JOHN JONES.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

December Term, 1859.

FROM SMITH.

This cause was tried before Gardenhire, J. Verdict and judgment for plaintiff.McLain and Head, for plaintiff in error; J. H. Moores, for the defendant in error.

WRIGHT, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

The bill of exceptions which was made up at the trial term in November, 1858, omitted to state that it contained all the evidence used in the case. To be relieved from the consequence of this omission the defendant below, who lost the cause and whose business it was to see that the bill of exceptions was properly made out, at the July term, 1859, moved the court for leave to amend the bill of exceptions by stating that the same, as signed, sealed, and made part of the record at the November term, 1858, contained all the evidence that was before the jury at the trial of the cause at said November term, at the same time proposing to the attorney of the plaintiff that he might insert any evidence before the jury and not included in said bill of exceptions. No further evidence was inserted, and the court being of opinion that said bill of exceptions contained all the evidence before the jury at the trial of the cause, the amendment was made. To this the plaintiff excepted. In support of this practice we have been referred to the case of The State v. Reid, 1 Dev. & B. 381, and other decisions in the State of North Carolina. These authorities are not directly upon a case like this, and appear to me, in principle, to differ from it. They seem to relate to amendments, nunc pro tunc, allowed in the inferior court, after appeal or writ of error and transcript in the Superior Court being made to conform to them, they are not open to inquiry in another court, either as to their propriety, or as to the periods at which they are made. The rule as stated by Judge Ruffin, in The State v. Reid, is that after a case has been transferred from one court to another, whether by appeal or change of venue, the court from which it has gone cannot proceed further in it. Whatever purports to be posterior to the loss of jurisdiction is, therefore, erroneous, and probably void. But the principle extends no farther. When the action of the court is not a subsequent adjudication, nor anything preparatory to an adjudication to be had in that court, but relates to what was done in the cause while in that court, there is a plain difference. No usurpation of authority then appears. The act purports to have been done while the court had jurisdiction; and as to the point of fact the statement cannot be questioned by any other court. Every court is the exclusive judge of its own records, and is competent to make them speak the truth as to its own proceedings. Now, this seems to me necessary to relate to things done in the inferior court, the entry of which upon the records, was omitted, but not to things omitted to be done by the court altogether. Here the material statements in the bill of exceptions, that this was all the evidence, was not made, or ordered to be made at all, but so far as we can see, entirely escaped the court and the parties, until an appeal had been taken and the term had passed by an adjournment. Nor is anything to the contrary of this assumed in the amendment. But it is made because the court then, at the July term, 1859, was of the opinion the bill of exceptions contained all the evidence.

But whatever may be the extent to which the decisions in North Carolina have gone, we understand our own...