Sheffield v. Sheffield

• Decision Date: 31 December 1848
• Citation: 3 Tex. 79
• Parties: LYDIA SHEFFIELD v. JAMES R. SHEFFIELD
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

3 Tex. 79

LYDIA SHEFFIELD

v.JAMES R. SHEFFIELD

Supreme Court of Texas.

December Term, 1848.

Appeal from Gonzales County.

The confessions of a party, when unsustained by collateral circumstances, are not competent proof of the fact of adultery.

By our statute, divorces are placed upon broader grounds than separations from bed and board are placed by the ecclesiastical law of England. A series of studied vexations, and deliberate insults and provocations, would be sufficient cause for divorce, without apprehension of personal violence or bodily hurt. They would constitute the intolerable treatment contemplated by the statute. [[[[[[[ Post, 168.]

The opinions of witnesses are inadmissible as evidence. The jury must draw their own conclusions from the facts which are proved; and these facts, in cases of divorce, must be such as to produce the conviction that a continuance of the matrimonial relation between the parties would be insupportable.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

VANDERLIP for appellant.

The verdict of the jury in this case should have been set aside and a new trial granted.

The policy of American law is generally in favor of the stability of the marriage union.

If the facts proved upon the trial of this cause in the court below are sufficient to authorize a divorce by any construction of the statute, it might almost lead to the destruction of the marriage institution within the state.

The facts proved in this cause do not show “excesses, cruel treatment or outrages of such a character as to render the living together of the parties insupportable.”

To constitute such treatment in judgment of law, there must be a serious apprehension of bodily harm. All the authorities agree that mere ill-temper, want of civil attention, or even violent displays of passion, are not sufficient grounds for a divorce a mensa et thoro. [2 Kent, 125-6; 2 Mass. Rep. 150;4 Mass. Rep. 587;3 Mass. Rep. 321; 5 Johns. Ch. Rep. 187, 501.]WEBB for appellee.

The petition alleges adultery in the wife; a series of unkind and undutiful conduct to the husband; and finally, abandonment.

The jury found the defendant “guilty of the excesses charged in the petition,” and the court, upon that finding, decreed a divorce.

If the jury meant by the word “excesses,” that the defendant was guilty of all the acts alleged against her, they were surely sufficient cause for a divorce; and we must presume they did so mean, as the term is apt when applied to either or all of them.

The only question then, is, did the evidence justify the verdict? There is certainly some discrepancy in the evidence, but that is not sufficient cause to set aside the verdict. It was the province of the jury to weigh the testimony. They may have seen enough in the conduct of some of the witnesses to destroy their credibility. This court has not the means of detecting departures from integrity which are possessed by the judge and jury who hear the witnesses testify; and it is for this reason that appellate courts have adopted the rule of not disturbing verdicts rendered upon conflicting testimony. “It is not enough that it is not clear that the verdict is right; it must clearly appear that it is wrong, to induce the court to set it aside.” [Briscoe vs. Bronaugh, 1 Texas R. 326.] This principle is reasserted in Duggan vs. Cole and in other cases decided at the present term.

It is very generally laid down, that “where the court below refused to set aside the verdict upon the ground that it was against the evidence, the error must be very flagrant to induce a court of appeals to reverse the judgment.” [[[[[[[2 Bibb, 313; 3 Little, 169, 189;1 Bibb, 241;4 Bibb, 195; 1 Monroe, 111, 262.]

Again, “a new trial ought not to be granted on the ground that the verdict is against evidence, unless it is palpably so.” [1 J. J. Marsh. 6; 2 Id. 310; 3 Marsh. 397; Hard. 629.]

The authorities referred to by the counsel for the appellant are inapplicable in this state, where the causes for divorce are regulated by statute. The legislature seems to have acted upon the principle, that, when the conduct of either party is such as to destroy all hope of happiness in married life, it is wiser and better for them to be separated. When the object of the union is defeated, it is not the policy of the law to keep the parties together in a perpetual state of disorder and misery. Mrs. Sheffield, in point of fact, may not have been guilty of adultery, but her admission that she had made an assignation to meet another man in the bottom, for the purpose of committing it (independent of her morose and surly temper), presented an insuperable bar to future harmony between herself and husband. It was the knell of destroying confidence and peace, which time had no power to soften or obliterate.

Chief Justice HEMPHILL delivered the opinion of the court.

The petition was filed by the appellee to obtain a divorce from his wife, Lydia Sheffield, the appellant. The petitioner states, in substance, that he had always treated his wife with tenderness and affection; that for the last six or eight months she was in the habit of addressing him, almost invariably, in an angry, insulting and aggravating manner; that on the second or third of May, 1848 (which was about five or six days before the filing of the petition), she voluntarily abandoned the house and home of the petitioner, without any cause or provocation; that on the fifth she returned, and on the sixth left with her clothing, refusing any longer to live with the petitioner, although he has solicited her to that effect; and that owing to this cruel treatment, and these outrages, their living together is insupportable, etc. In an amended petition he charges the appellant with adultery, committed since their inter-marriage, etc.

The answer is a simple denial of all and singular the charges in the original or amended petition contained.

The original petition states the marriage was celebrated sometime in the year 1846; though in the amendment it is fixed on the 21st of January, 1847.

One witness states that the defendant was sometimes sour and sulky towards plaintiff; and that defendant at one time acknowledged to him that she had, during her marriage with plaintiff, made an assignation with a man, who was not her husband, to meet him in the river bottom, for the purpose of an ““improper intercourse, cohabitation and adultery.” He also testified that she sustained a fair character in the community; and that he never knew of any other unkind treatment to her husband than a few short words, and occasionally sulkiness.

Another witness testified that the appellant's behavior to her husband was frequently irritating, unkind and unbecoming, in his opinion; that on one occasion she refused to visit the house of a neighbor with him, and afterwards went alone to the house; that she frequently went on visits to her neighbors, and stayed all night; that on another occasion he saw the plaintiff mending his own coat; that she was occasionally sulky; that the circumstances stated were all the acts of cruelty, or excesses, he had witnessed; and that a great portion of the time the witness lived with the plaintiff, which was shortly after the marriage, the plaintiff and wife appeared to live agreeable and happy.

Another witness stated that he had never witnessed any acts of cruelty or unkindness on the part of the defendant to her husband; nor had ever heard, believed or knew that defendant had ever committed adultery, or had ever agreed to do so; that the character of the defendant in the community was always regarded as irreproachable; and the witness believed, that, if there was a virtuous woman in the world, she was one.

The defendant proved by a witness the acknowledgment of the plaintiff that he had driven the defendant from his house; that she was afterwards received in the family of the witness; that he regarded her as a woman of good character, and an industrious and neat woman.

The jury found “the defendant guilty of the excesses as charged in the petition;” and thereupon a divorce was decreed, and the community property ordered to be distributed, in equal moieties, between the complainant and the defendant.

A motion for a new trial, on the ground of newly discovered evidence, was overruled and an appeal taken.

There are no bills of exceptions sent up with the record, and we are not informed of the instructions of the court to the jury.

The only question is, whether the verdict of the jury is supported by the evidence.

The charge of adultery, alleged in the amended petition, is altogether unsupported by evidence. The proof shows the character of the appellant to be irreproachable, one of the witnesses using the very striking expression, that, if there be a virtuous woman in the world, she was one. The only shadow of evidence reflecting on the purity and virtue of the appellant is the statement by the witness of her acknowledgment that she had made an assignation with a stranger, since her marriage, for the purpose of illicit and adulterous cohabitation. All the other evidence on the subject of...