Shannon v. Kinny

• Decision Date: 13 October 1817
• Citation: 8 Ky. 3
• Parties: John Shannon v. Tho. Kinny et al.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

8 Ky. 3

John Shannon v. Tho. Kinny et al.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

October 13, 1817

ON AN APPEAL FROM A JUDGMENT OF THE WOODFORD CIRCUIT COURT.

Bibb and Hardin, for appellant.

Pope for appellee.

OPINION

BOYLE CHIEF JUSTICE

This was an action of ejectment. On the trial, after the plaintiff had exhibited the patent of the commonwealth to William Shannon for the land in controversy, and had produced evidence conducing to prove that William Shannon, the patentee, was the son of William Shannon, senior; that the plaintiff, John Shannon, was the eldest brother of the patentee; that the patentee was killed by the Indians in 1782; that William Shannon, his father, died in a year or two thereafter, leaving John Shannon, the plaintiff, his eldest son; and after it had also appeared in evidence, that Hugh Shannon, a younger brother, had, in the year 1784, settled upon the land in controversy, claiming it as his own, and had used and sold part thereof; that for 20 years or upwards John Shannon had been in habits of intimacy with his brother Hugh Shannon, and was fully apprised of his claiming and selling said land; the attorney for the defendant asked a witness whether said Hugh Shannon had not latterly become insolvent, avowing his object to be to prove that and other circumstances, a collusive destruction of a writing evidencing a transfer of said land, betwixt the plaintiff and Hugh Shannon; to the asking and answering of which question the plaintiff objected; but the court overruled the objection, and instructed the witness to answer the question, to which the plaintiff excepted.

Whether the court below erred in their decision of this point, is the first question which is necessary to be determined.

The objection to the evidence is grounded merely upon its supposed irrelevancy. There is no question that in strict propriety the parties should confine their evidence to the matters in issue, and that proof wholly foreign to such matters, is inadmissible; but to sustain an objection to evidence merely on the ground that it is irrelevant, it ought to appear to be so beyond all doubt, for it is a settled rule in all cases where the competency of evidence is doubtful, to admit it to go to the jury, leaving them to determine as to the weight to which it shall be entitled, and this rule ought to apply with peculiar force to a case like the present, where the objection to the evidence is founded solely on its irrelevancy. When tested by this rule, we apprehend the evidence admitted by the court below, will not be found to be so clearly irrelevant as to justify its exclusion.^[a] The lapse of time, together with the accompanying circumstances, certainly affords a ground upon which the jury might presume a transfer in writing to have been executed either by the patentee or the plaintiff, to Hugh Shannon, and to strengthen this presumption, it could not be improper to account for the non-production of such a transfer. Circumstances, therefore, tending to create a presumption, that it had been destroyed by the collusion of Hugh Shannon, would, no doubt, be admissible, and as circumstances having that tendency, would, in our apprehension, be more readily credited, by a jury who were informed that he had become insolvent, we can not say that the proof of his insolvency was so utterly irrelevant as to justify its exclusion.

Evidence to be excluded from the jury because of irrelevancy, should clearly be irrelevant to the issue.

Circumstances from whence the jury may presume a fact material to the...