Helen Raub v. Helen Carpenter

• Decision Date: 01 December 1902
• Docket Number: No. 64,64
• Parties: HELEN C. RAUB, Charles D. Collins, Lewis E. Collins, et al., Plffs. in Err. , v. HELEN C. CARPENTER, Helen K. Bremerman, Edmund H. Brown, et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

187 U.S. 159

23 S.Ct. 72

47 L.Ed. 119

HELEN C. RAUB, Charles D. Collins, Lewis E. Collins, et al., Plffs. in Err.,

v HELEN C. CARPENTER, Helen K. Bremerman, Edmund H. Brown, et al.

No. 64.

Argued November 3, 4, 1902.

Decided December 1, 1902.

Messrs. Victor H. Wallace and Charles Poe for plaintiffs in error.

Messrs. J. J. Darlington and Joseph A. Burkhart for defendants in error.

Mr. Chief Justice Fuller delivered the opinion of the court:

This is a writ of error to a judgment of the court of appeals of the District of Columbia, affirming certain orders of the supreme court of the District, holding a special term for orphans' court business, admitting a will and codicil to probate and granting letters testamentary thereon; and denying a motion to vacate that decree.

Plaintiffs in error filed a caveat to the probate and record of the writings purporting to be the will and codicil, and issues, addressed to both, as to mental capacity, fraud or coercion, and undue influence, were framed for trial by jury.

Trial was had, and on the conclusion of the evidence the court, at the request of the caveatees, instructed the jury that there was no evidence tending to show fraud, undue influence, or coercion, and that on these issues the jury should render its verdict for the caveatees. To which the caveators made no objection, and preserved no exception. Three instructions in respect of the mental capacity of the deceased to make a valid will or codicil were given on behalf of the caveators as requested by them.

The jury returned a verdict June 15, 1900, in favor of the caveatees. No motion for a new trial was made within four days as required by rule 53 of the court, or prior to June 26, when the court entered an order and decree admitting the will and codicil to probate, and granting letters testamentary thereon, from which an appeal was taken to the court of appeals.

Several exceptions were reserved to the rulings of the court in the progress of the trial, which were disposed of by the court of appeals satisfactorily, as we think. But one of them has been pressed on our attention.

Dr. George B. Heinecke, a practising physician in Washington, and a grandnephew of deceased, testified that he had known deceased ever since he could recollect, and was accustomed to seeing him frequently; that he had seen him when recovering from attacks of epilepsy subsequently to the execution of the will and codicil; 'that testator had stated to him that he was a sufferer from urethral calculus; that on the 13th of March 1896, he had seen the testator have a fainting spell;' 'that he had on one occasion seen testator laughing to himself; that on or about the 13th of February, 1899, during the blizzard, the testator acted peculiarly about the snow in his yard; did not know how it got in there, all of it, and went out there and tried to get it removed;' and witness stated the result of the autopsy and the cause of death. He was then asked the following question: 'Doctor, have you formed any opinion, from your uncle's general condition of health and the conditions disclosed by his brain at this investigation, and from all you know about him yourself, what his condition of mind was?'

To that portion of the question which called for an opinion from the witness from 'all that you know about him yourself,' the caveatees objected on the ground that no sufficient basis had been laid for that portion of the question, and that the facts relied upon in this particular should be first adduced. The court sustained the objection and caveators preserved an exception.

We agree with the court of appeals that the trial court did not err in holding that portion of the question objectionable, and, if so, the question as framed could not properly have been allowed to be propounded, though caveators were left free to put it with the objectionable words omitted. Clearly, the opinion of the witness from facts he did not disclose was inadmissible. If he knew anything about the deceased other than what he had stated, which aided him in arriving at a conclusion, that knowledge should have been developed. In that particular the question assumed the existence of facts for which there was no foundation in the evidence.

So far as the conduct of the trial was concerned, we find no reversible error.

On July 16, 1900, twenty days after the decree was entered, caveators moved that that decree be vacated on the ground that one of the jurors was disqualified for service on the jury by the fact that he was under the age of twenty-one years, and by the fact that he had several times been convicted of the crime of petit larceny in the police court of the District. The motion was supported by transcripts from the records of the police court, and by affidavits, sustaining both disqualifications, the affidavits also showing that at the beginning of the trial term of the court at which they had been summoned the jurors had all been examined on their voir dire by the presiding justice as to their qualifications to serve on the jury; that the juror now charged to be disqualified had then and there falsely answered that he was over the age of twenty-one years, and had never been convicted of crime; that one of the counsel for the caveators was present in court at the time of such examination; and that the falsehood of the statements of the juror in question was not known...