Mcmasters v. Blair

• Decision Date: 01 January 1857
• Citation: 29 Pa. 298
• Parties: McMasters versus Blair.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 298

29 Pa. 298

McMasters versus Blair.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Court of Common Pleas of Crawford county.

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D. M. Farrelly and Finney, for plaintiff in error.

Church and Pettis, for defendant in error.

The opinion of the court was delivered by LOWRIE, J.

On the evidence put upon our paper-books, the verdict rendered in this cause seems to us so strange and unaccountable, that we are naturally inclined to suppose that there must have been some very grave error in the charge of the court, or that some error of minor importance has been unduly impressed upon the jury. There is the most ample proof that this will was executed according to the forms of law, and not the slightest indication that anybody doubted the testimony of the witness in this regard. There is not the least ground of suspicion that the testator was incompetent, before his last illness, to make a will, or that any undue influence was exerted in procuring him to make this will as it is. The only ground, therefore, on which this will was set aside must have been, and appears to have been, because the jury considered that the testator's mind had become so enfeebled by his sickness when his will was made, that it cannot properly be called his will. He was ill about four days; and we have quite a full account of his mental symptoms during the whole time. Three witnesses express opinions on the state of his mind, on visits made by them on Thursday and Friday. The will was executed on Friday night about two o'clock, and he died on Saturday morning about ten o'clock. One witness thinks his mind was not sound; another that it was weak and wandering; and the physician thought him not capable of reflection on any subject. Yet all of them give facts that show very plainly that there was no improbability that he might have mind and memory enough to make a complete and rational disposition of his property. On the question of the testamentary capacity of a dying man, the fact of an occasional flightiness or wandering of intellect during his sickness, is generally of very slight importance, and is scarcely any evidence that that state continued; for usually it is an accidental abnormity, very easily accounted for by temporary circumstances. If we find an obstruction in a street or crowded thoroughfare we do not presume that it will remain there. Notwithstanding such accidental mental disorder, the presumption is still that a man is competent when he makes his will, and the contrary ought to be proved before the jury can find it. Then, on the other hand, we have seven witnesses who knew the testator intimately, and who had the fullest opportunity of observing him during the whole day and night preceding his death, who recount his words and conduct with great particularity, and all of whom believed him to be of sound and disposing mind, and give most abundant facts in proof of it. How such testimony could be set aside, when every witness seems to have been respectable, and no serious attack is made on the credibility of one of them, seems to us quite astonishing. If this example were to be followed in the administration of the law, every dying man's will would be in danger. The opinion of some witnesses, that the testator's mind was unsound, or flighty, or wandering, or torpid, when they saw him, ought to go for nothing against such facts as are related by those who saw so much of his last hours. The opinion that he could not reflect is disproved by the will itself, and by the testimony of Hugh McMasters, showing that he well knew all about his property, and how he desired to dispose of it. Very often a disposing mind needs very little power of reflection, because it has but little to reflect about. The work of reflection has been performed before; and when the time of making the will comes, memory alone is wanted in order to dictate the results. Wills written in extremis are not necessarily, and perhaps not often, first thought out and arranged then. And though the testator's mind might be very dull when called to subjects in which he took...