Sauers v. Giddings

• Decision Date: 22 January 1892
• Citation: 51 N.W. 265,90 Mich. 50
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: SAUERS v. GIDDINGS et al.

51 N.W. 265

90 Mich. 50

SAUERS v. GIDDINGS et al.

Supreme Court of Michigan

January 22, 1892

Error to circuit court, Kent county; WILLIAM E. GROVE, Judge.

Action of ejectment by Helen S. Sauers against J. Allen Giddings Eliza E. Giddings, and Lottie E. Works. Verdict and judgment for plaintiff. Defendants bring error. Reversed.

Drury & Wolcott, for appellants.

Taggart, Wolcott & Ganson, for appellee.

MONTGOMERY J.

This is an action of ejectment. The plaintiff recovered in the court below, and defendants allege error on the part of the trial judge in receiving certain testimony offered on the part of the plaintiff, in excluding testimony offered on behalf of the defendants, and in the instructions to the jury. To prove a conveyance in her chain of title, the plaintiff offered an entry in the "Scranton Abstracts," so-called showing a conveyance from Jonathan Chubb, as administrator of the estate of Jason Winslow, to E. B. Bostwick. This was objected to, and it is now urged that this deed was inadmissible to show a transfer of the interest or title previously shown in Winslow. It is insisted by the plaintiff that the objection made in the court below was not sufficiently specific. But as the question is likely to arise on another trial, and as the case must be reversed on other grounds, we shall treat the question as properly before us. The law of 1867 (How. St. � 5678) provides, in effect, that, as to deeds executed by an executor, administrator, or sheriff, the deed itself, the record, or a certified copy of the record shall be prima facie evidence of the regularity of all proceedings required by law anterior to such deed. It is claimed by the defendants that this statute was not intended to apply to conveyances like the one in question, which had been theretofore recorded, but we think the title of the act, viz., "An act relative to recording deeds, mortgages, and all instruments of record, and to declare the effect thereof," is sufficiently broad to include existing records as well as those thereafter to be made; and, as the enactment relates simply to a rule of evidence, there is no reason why a strained construction should be placed upon the language employed. It is further contended, however, that, even if the original deed or the record itself would, under this statute, be evidence of the regularity of the proceedings anterior to the deed, the Scranton abstract is not, by force of the statute declaring it to be a public record, made evidence of these facts. The law of 1865, (page 667,) relative to the Scranton abstract, is entitled "An act to declare certain abstracts of the records of the county of Kent to be public records;" and provides "that said abstracts shall be, and the same are hereby, declared to be and established as a public record, and in all the courts of this state, and in all suits and proceedings therein, * * * shall be prima facie evidence of the matters therein stated, and shall have the same virtue and effect as by present provisions of law the records of the office of register of deeds do possess." It is very clear that the two statutes, taken together, one declaring that a deed by an administrator, or the record thereof, shall be prima facie evidence of his authority, and the other that the Scranton abstract shall be taken as a public record and evidence of the facts therein stated, would constitute the entry in question prima facie evidence of such authority, unless the words italicized are treated as a limitation upon what precedes them. We think that, when the title of the act is considered, such construction is too narrow. The words referred to were not intended to preclude the use of such records for all purposes, and with such effect as the legislature at any subsequent time saw fit to give to public records as evidence, but were intended to express the purpose of the legislature to give to such abstracts the same virtue and effect as only the records of deeds would possess were it not for that enactment. There was no error in the ruling on this point.

Error is...