Gaskill v. Brown
| Decision Date | 09 January 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 1,No. 38580,38580,1 |
| Citation | 118 S.E.2d 113,103 Ga.App. 33 |
| Parties | F. E. GASKILL v. Dlizabeth BROWN, Administratrix |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court
In an action on a note held by a decedent's estate, evidence of payment is properly excluded where the proffered evidence does not show any connection with the note sued on.
The plaintiff administratrix brought this action on a promissory note executed in favor of the deceased by the defendant. The note was in the principal sum of $2,000, and bore a credit of $750, entered approximately seven months from its inception date. The defendant entered a special plea that the indebtedness represented by the note had been discharged by the payment in full of a fi. fa. issued on a judgment entered on May 5, 1950, in the sum of $2,000 by the United States District Court in favor of one Hamilton, trustee in bankruptcy of the plaintiff's decedent against the present defendant. The defendant filed an answer under oath denying any indebtedness.
At the trial the defendant tendered in evidence a certified copy of the suit and order of default judgment in the prior case between the trustee in bankruptcy of the plaintiff's decedent and the defendant. The trial court refused to admit this evidence on the ground that the document did not in any way refer to the note in suit in the present case. The defendant also offered in evdence the original petition in bankruptcy of the deceased for the purpose of showing that nowhere in the petition was there ahy recitation that the defendant ownd the plaintiff any money. The trial court rejected this evidence. The defendant further offered some of the sworn testimony in the bankruptcy proceeding, but admitted that it did not refrer specifically to the note. This evidence also was rejected by the trial court, which then directed a verdict for the balance due on the note with interest. The defendant filed a motion for new trial on the general grounds, which were abandoned on appeal. By the amended motion for new trial three grounds were added, all of which relate to the exclusion of this testimony and rulings thereon. The trial court overruled the motion for a new trial, to which the defendant excepted.
Hamilton & Anderson, George Anderson, Gary Hamilton, Rome, for plaintiff in error.
James Maddox, Rome, for defendant in error.
1. The first special ground of the defendant's amended motion for a new trial contends that the trial court erred in excluding the certified copy of the complaint and judgment in the prior bankruptcy proceedings between the parties. The third special ground assigns error in the trial court's ruling that whatever evidence the defendant sought to offer must in some way refer to the specific note in suit.
These two grounds will be considered together. At the basis of the defendant's problem rests the rule of Code, § 38-1603 which prevented the defendant from testifying in his own favor as to payment of the note by reason of the death of the payee. The defendant asserts that since he could not testify in his behalf about any transaction relating to this note, the only was he...
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Wood v. Hamilton
...fails to show why the documentary evidence was rejected. Smith v. Manley, 96 Ga.App. 158(1), pp. 160, 99 S.E.2d 534; Gaskill v. Brown, 103 Ga.App. 33, 36(2), 118 S.E.2d 113. And see Maxwell v. Hollis, 214 Ga. 358, 360(1), 104 S.E.2d 6. Special ground 13 complains of the refusal of the trial......
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Hill v. General Rediscount Corp.
...the amount of the judgment to which plaintiff was entitled as a matter of law on the basis of the pleadings, but compare Gaskill v. Brown, 103 Ga.App. 33, 118 S.E.2d 113. 3. Since the plaintiff was, as a matter of law, entitled to a judgment in some amount on the basis of the pleadings alon......