Shaler & Hall Quarry Co. v. Campbell

• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: GRANGER, J.
• Citation: Shaler & Hall Quarry Co. v. Campbell, 53 Conn. 327, 2 A. 755 (Conn. 1885)
• Decision Date: 23 October 1885
• Parties: SHALER & HALL QUARRY Co. v. CAMPBELL and others.

2 A. 755

53 Conn. 327

SHALER & HALL QUARRY Co

v. CAMPBELL and others.

SUPREME COURT OF CONNECTICUT.

Filed October 23, 1885.

Appeal from superior court, Middlesex county.

S. H. Warner, for plaintiff.

Crafts & Tillinghast and E. B. Birdsey, for defendants.

GRANGER, J. This case is an action of assumpsit, with the common counts, brought under the old practice. It was brought to the superior court in 1872, was continued from term to term until 1878, when it was referred to C. G. R. Vinal, Esq., as a committee, who heard the case in February, 1885, and made his report to the court then in session. The defendants remonstrated against the acceptance of the report, but the court overruled the remonstrance, accepted the report, and rendered judgment for the plaintiffs. The defendants appealed to this court. The reasons of appeal are substantially those set up in the remonstrance, and though put in a variety of forms may be stated briefly as follows: (1) That the committee had no authority to act; (2) that the committee erred in refusing the defendants' request for an adjournment; (3) that the committee erred in receiving evidence.

As to the first point. The finding is that the committee, after the first appointment in 1878, which it is admitted was in all respects a legal one, "was not subsequently reappointed, and no entry was made on the written docket of the court after that term showing that he had been reappointed, but his name was regularly entered as committee in the printed term dockets of each succeeding term." The printed term docket, of which every lawyer practicing in that court had a copy, gave notice to all parties interested of the fact that Mr. Vinal was a committee in the case, and was all the information needed by either party to enable him to take measures for having the case heard by the committee. But, without relying on this docket as taking the place in law of the regular permanent docket, or as giving validity to the continued tenure of the committeeship by Mr. Vinal, it is sufficient that he had been, in the first instance, legally appointed, and that he had not been removed by the court or superseded by any other appointee, or the case disposed of in any other way. Where an auditor or committee is once legally appointed, and the case runs from term to term by continuance, the auditor or committee remains such, and the case continues to stand referred until the appointment is directly or impliedly revoked by the court. An actual reappointment at every term of the court is not necessary. The failure of...