Johnson v. Hall
| Decision Date | 19 February 1906 |
| Citation | 40 So. 1,87 Miss. 667 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | EDWARD H. JOHNSON, JR., ET AL. v. SARAH HALL |
November 1905
FROM the chancery court of Rankin county, HON. ROBERT B. MAYES Chancellor.
Sarah Hall, the appellee, was the complainant in the court below Johnson and others, the appellants, were defendants there. From a decree in favor of complainant the defendants appealed to the supreme court.
Sarah Hall, the complainant, an illiterate negro woman, was the owner of certain property in Rankin county. She was approached by E. H. Johnson, Sr., a negro lawyer and the father of appellants, who advised her that she was entitled to a pension, and that, in order to prepare the necessary papers to secure it, he would have to have a description of her property. She therefore gave him her deed. She went to Brandon, the county site, to sign her pension papers prepared by Johnson, and the clerk before whom the acknowledgment was taken took seven acknowledgments. Only six pension papers were shown to have been signed by the appellee, but her deed to the appellants bore the same date, and was acknowledged at the same time and before the same officer, as the pension papers. The deed was not read to complainant, and every paper she signed and acknowledged was signed and acknowledged at the same time, and she thought they were all pension papers; she had no knowledge or intention of deeding away her property, and she knew nothing of the appellants' claim to the property until several years after the transaction. For a criminal case which sprang from this transaction, see Johnson v. Stale, ante.
Decree affirmed.
Johnson & Johnson, for appellants.
James L. McCaskill, for appellee.
The previous decisions of this court construing Code 1892, § 1764, completely answer the appellants' contention touching their asserted right to have examined witnesses orally in open court. Dickerson v. Askew, 82 Miss. 436; Winner v. Brandon, 82 Miss. 767; White v. Jones, 83 Miss. 231; Lessley v. Ogden, 83 Miss. 442.
Appellants are dull of comprehension if they hope to have the facts of this case determined as falling short of a shameful fraud.
None of the assignments of error possess any merit. It has been heretofore decided that Code 1892, § 1764, is a restrictive, not an enlarging, statute. Dickerson v. Askew, 82 Miss. 436 (34 So. 157).
The instant case clearly does not fall within its scope; but if it did, appellants did not bring themselves within its terms. There was no...
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