Saunders v. Stephenson

• Decision Date: 21 December 1908
• Docket Number: 13,448
• Citation: 47 So. 783,94 Miss. 676
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MARY E. SAUNDERS v. GEORGE W. STEPHENSON, EXECUTOR, ETC

47 So. 783

94 Miss. 676

MARY E. SAUNDERS v. GEORGE W. STEPHENSON, EXECUTOR, ETC

No. 13,448

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 21, 1908

FROM the circuit court of Marshall county, HON. WILLIAM A. ROANE Judge.

Mrs Saunders, appellant, was plaintiff in the court below Stephenson, executor, appellee, was defendant there. From a judgment in defendant's favor plaintiff appealed to the supreme court.

The suit was upon a promissory note, alleged to have been executed in his life time by defendant's intestate payable to plaintiff. The affidavit upon which its alleged probate was based was made by plaintiff's husband and not by plaintiff herself. On the trial of the case in the court below, the introduction of the note in evidence being objected to by defendant, plaintiff offered to introduce testimony affirmatively showing that her husband who made the affidavit was her agent in so doing, thereunto specially authorized, and that plaintiff was at the time seriously ill and had been since the death of the decedent and so remained for a year afterwards, and was wholly disabled to attend to her business affairs, or to leave her home.

The court below held the proffered testimony incompetent and would not allow the note to be read in evidence.

Affirmed.

W. V. Sullivan, for appellant.

The law was not intended to defeat but to promote the ends of justice. To say that the husband and agent of an invalid wife, personally and perfectly cognizant of all the facts connected with the contraction of a debt and the execution of a note therefor could not probate such a note against the debtor at the request and direction of that invalid wife--is such a monstrocity that it does not require citation of authority from any source whatever. The court should have permitted the note and the testimony showing the surroundings connected with the probate all to have gone to the jury and not swept away upon this cobweb defendant's rights.

If it has come to that point where substantial rights shall be swept away by such flimsy objections as here are urged, it were well to consider and reflect upon whether or not the courts are organized to defeat or administer justice.

Mayes & Longstreet, for appellee.

The case must be affirmed on the authority of McWhorter v. Donald, 39 Miss. 779.

It is noteworthy that in this case we have not yet found anywhere in ths record a statement made by Mrs. Saunders herself, even by...