In re Blood's Will
| Decision Date | 12 April 1890 |
| Citation | 19 A. 770,62 Vt. 359 |
| Parties | In re HENRY BLOOD'S WILL. MARGARET E BLOOD, PROPONENT. LAURA E. BLOOD, ET AL., CONTESTANTS, APPELLANTS |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
FEBRUARY TERM, 1890
Judgment affirmed and certificate ordered.
Wing & Fay, Samuel E. Pingree and Hunton & Stickney for the contestants.
The three full questions and answers in the depositions excluded by the County Court have the common defect of calling upon the witness to pass upon the precise question on trial before the jury. This is never allowable. A non-expert witness must be confined to a statement of facts, or his opinion formed from facts known by the witness and disclosed to the jury. It is the province of the jury, under proper instructions from the court, to determine the issue upon which such facts and opinion are to be considered. This is too well established to require the citation of authorities. We find no error in the exclusion of other portions of answers in the deposition of Mrs. Lee. What her grocer told her was hearsay, and inadmissible for that reason. When she said, not in answer to the interrogatory, that the testator was "so irritable and abusive to his father that the doctors forbid him coming into the room," she does not state facts bearing upon the mental condition of the testate which could aid the jury in determining whether three years later the testator had mental capacity to make a will, the only issue on trial. While his mental condition and capacity at that time might bear remotely upon his capacity to make the will three years later, she, without stating the occasion or extent of his inability, makes the statement so indefinitely and so related to the condition of his father and the opinion of the doctors, that it could furnish no proper aid to the jury in determining this issue. It would be more likely to mislead than otherwise, and was properly excluded. The court also excluded from an answer "unless you call the selling of articles that didn't belong to him a transacting business." It does not fully appear whether this statement of the witness was made upon personal knowledge or hearsay. If the former, the witness had already fully stated her knowledge upon that subject and the contestants were not prejudiced by the exclusion; and if the latter, it was hearsay and inadmissible.
II. The request of the contestants, so far as it called upon the court to construe the will to enable the...
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