Johnson v. Brown
| Decision Date | 10 October 1891 |
| Docket Number | 15,185 |
| Citation | 28 N.E. 698,130 Ind. 534 |
| Parties | Johnson v. Brown |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Petition for a Rehearing Overruled Feb. 27, 1892.
From the Huntington Circuit Court.
Judgment affirmed.
B. F Ibach, B. M. Cobb and C. W. Watkins, for appellant.
M. L Spencer, for appellee.
The appellant brought an action of slander against the appellee, the slanderous words consisting of a charge that the appellant had forged certain instruments, and expressing an opinion that he ought to be in the penitentiary.
To this complaint the defendant answered by a general denial, and also by an affirmative answer, in which the plaintiff was charged with having mistreated and abandoned his wife, and thereby lost the respect of his neighbors, closing with a denial of all other allegations in the complaint. The plaintiff moved the court to strike out parts of this pleading, and his motion was overruled.
This paragraph was neither in mitigation nor justification of the slander charged in the complaint, and the court should have sustained the motion of the plaintiff, and eliminated the record of a pleading that was an aggravation rather than mitigation of the charge contained in the complaint. It is a part of the duty of nisi prius courts to frown upon and discourage the filing of nondescript pleadings such as this one, but it does not follow that we should reverse a judgment on account of the failure of the court to sustain such a motion. That we can not reverse on account of the erroneous ruling of a court in overruling such motion is well settled. McLean v. Equitable Life, etc., Society, 100 Ind. 127 (137); Rowe v. Major, 92 Ind. 206.
A motion to compel the defendant to separate this paragraph of answer into two paragraphs was made and overruled. The court did not err in overruling this motion. The pleading was not double, but attempted to set up a plea of confession and avoidance of a part of the complaint and a denial of the residue. State, ex rel., v. Newlin, 69 Ind. 108.
A demurrer to all of the answer except that portion which contained a denial was filed and overruled. Special demurrers are not provided for in our code of practice. Estep v. Estep, 23 Ind. 114; Mathews v. Norman, 42 Ind. 176.
The sufficiency of the pleading as a whole was not tested on demurrer, and we are, therefore, not required to pass upon that question.
During the course of the trial a witness was asked if he was acquainted with the character, standing and reputation of the plaintiff in July, 1885, among the parishioners of his church and in the community where he then resided? The witness, having answered in the affirmative, was then asked "whether that reputation, character and standing was good or bad;" to which he answered that it was bad.
The record informs us that the plaintiff objected to the same, for the reason that the question and answer thereto were "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial," and that the court overruled the objection.
This ruling of the court is complained of and relied upon to reverse the judgment rendered against the appellant.
Under the well-established and uniform rule of practice, that objection to the admission of evidence must be reasonably specific, and that the objection that the evidence is "incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant" is not sufficiently specific to present the question of its admissibility for review in this court, we must decline to examine this ruling. Ohio, etc., R. W. Co. v. Walker, 113 Ind. 196, 15 N.E. 234; Metzger v. Franklin Bank, 119 Ind. 359, 21 N.E. 973; Litten v. Wright School Tp. 127 Ind. 81, 26 N.E. 567.
Other evidence of a similar character was admitted during the course of the trial, but, as the objections to its admission were uniformly the same as above quoted, we need not consider them separately.
The defendant, during the course of his examination, denied the speaking of the slanderous words, and in cross-examination was asked if he did not make similar statements to another witness at another time and place. This he also denied. On rebuttal, the plaintiff offered to prove, for the purpose of contradiction, that the defendant did make such declaration, but the court excluded the evidence.
This evidence, if...
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