Schmidt v. Schmidt

• Decision Date: 07 December 1891
• Citation: 47 Minn. 451
• Parties: ANNA MARIA SCHMIDT and others <I>vs.</I> EMIL SCHMIDT and others.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

47 Minn. 451

ANNA MARIA SCHMIDT and othersvs.

EMIL SCHMIDT and others.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

December 7, 1891.

An instrument executed March 24, 1890, was admitted to probate in Dakota county as the last will of Gottfried Schmidt, late of that county, against the objections of Anna Maria Schmidt, his widow, and the devisees under an earlier will. The contestants appealed, on questions of law and fact, to the district court for the same county, where their motion that certain questions as to the execution of the will, the competency of the testator, and as to fraud and undue influence be submitted to a jury was denied, and the cause was tried by Crosby, J., who found the instrument to be the last will of the testator and entitled to probate, and ordered judgment affirming the order appealed from. The contestants appeal from an order refusing a new trial.

Henry C. James, for appellants.

Stringer & Seymour and Hodgson & Schaller, for respondents.

MITCHELL, J.

The principal question in this case is whether, upon an appeal to the district court from an order of the probate court admitting or refusing to admit a will to probate, a party has a constitutional right to a trial by jury of the issues as to the validity of the proposed will. The validity of the will which the probate court admitted to probate in this case was contested on the grounds (1) that it was never properly executed; (2) that the testator was not, at the time of its execution, of sound and disposing mind; (3) that its execution was procured by the undue influence of certain of the beneficiaries. When the matter came on for trial, the appellants moved that these issues should be submitted to a jury, which the court refused.

If the statutes of the state are valid, there can be no doubt that the appellants had no absolute right to a jury trial. From the earliest days of the territory down to date the statute has always been that a party is entitled to a jury trial, as a matter of absolute right, only of an issue of fact in actions for the recovery of money only, or of specific real property, or for divorce on the ground of adultery; but that every other issue of fact must be tried by the court, subject, however, to the right of the parties to consent, or of the court to order, that the whole issue or any specific question of fact be tried by a jury. Rev. St. 1851, c. 71, §§ 6, 7; Gen. St. 1866, c. 66, §§ 198, 199; Gen. St. 1878, c. 66, §§ 216, 217. Prior to 1874 the statute regulating appeals from the probate court made no special or express provision as to the mode of trial. This left the matter to be controlled by the general provisions of statute already referred to. The Laws of 1874, c. 71, § 2, (Gen. St. 1878, c. 49, § 19,) expressly provided that no jury trials should be allowed in such cases, except as provided by Gen. St. 1866, c. 66, § 199, (Gen. St. 1878, c. 66, § 217,) and upon issues settled in accordance with the rules of court. This in fact made no change, such being already the law. This same provision, in substance, unless appeals from the allowance or disallowance of a claim against the estate be an exception, is re-enacted in the Probate Code of 1889, § 261, (Laws 1889, c. 46.)

Section 4, art. 1, of the state constitution, ordains that the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate, and shall extend to all cases at law, without regard to the amount in controversy. The doctrine of this court, from Whallon v. Bancroft, 4 Minn. 70, (109,) down to State v. Minn. Thresher Mfg. Co., 40 Minn. 213, (41 N. W. Rep. 1020,) has uniformly been that the effect of this constitutional provision is merely to continue unimpaired and inviolate the right of trial by jury as it existed in the territory at the time of the adoption of the constitution; that it neither added to nor took from that right, except that, for reasons explained in Whallon v. Bancroft, supra, it was extended to all "cases at law," without regard to the amount in controversy. It would not be claimed that a proceeding to probate a will is a "case at law," as that term is generally understood or construed by this court. It therefore follows that a right of trial by jury in such proceedings was not given by the territorial statutes in force at the time of the adoption of the state constitution, and consequently is not within the constitutional guaranty, if those statutes are controlling.

Counsel for appellants, however, seeks to avoid this result by the following line of argument, to wit: That the right of trial by jury in the territory was determined by article 7 of the amendments to the constitution of the United States, as the paramount law, that "in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved;" that this had been construed by Justice Story in Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, to embrace all suits not of equity or admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the form which they may assume, to settle legal rights; that the issues as to the validity of a will involve legal rights, and therefore are within the guaranty of the federal constitution, and consequently the right of trial by jury was continued by the constitution of the state. While this mode of reasoning is ingenious, we think it is hardly sound. The immediate question being, not what construction the federal courts might have put on the federal constitution had the question arisen before them during the existence of the territory, but the construction to be placed on our own constitution, we should rather look to the provisions of our own statutes at the time of its adoption (and which were presumably supposed to have been the law at that time) in order to determine what the people of the territory understood and intended in adopting the provision that the right of trial by jury, as it then existed, should remain inviolate. If counsel's reasoning is sound, then certainly many of the decisions of this court are erroneous, for there are numerous proceedings to determine legal rights, neither of equity nor admiralty jurisdiction, which we have held did not come within the constitutional guaranty. But, as was said in Comrs. of Mille Lacs Co. v. Morrison, 22 Minn. 178, if this language in the dictum of Justice Story was used in the sense ascribed to it by counsel, it is certainly too broad. We have found no case in which the supreme court of the United States has decided that article 7 is to be construed as having any such comprehensive meaning. On the contrary, many decisions may be found which assume or imply that the phrase "suits at common law" is used in the ordinary and much more limited sense, viz., what were called "common-law actions." See Miller, Const. U. S. 492.

Counsel has exhaustively cited and discussed the authorities to show that at common law the rule was that, whenever in an equity suit the issue was devisavit vel non, the heir was entitled to have it heard by a jury, and that the equity court always either ordered the issue to be sent to the common-law court to be...