T. H. Leland v. D. R. Leonard

• Decision Date: 08 January 1921
• Citation: 112 A. 198,95 Vt. 36
• Parties: T. H. LELAND v. D. R. LEONARD
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

112 A. 198

95 Vt. 36

T. H. LELAND v. D. R. LEONARD

Supreme Court of Vermont

January 8, 1921

November Term, 1920.

ACTION OF CONTRACT. Pleas, the general issue and payment. Trial by Court at the September Term, 1918, Washington County Stanton, J., presiding. Judgment for the plaintiff. The defendant excepted. The opinion states the case.

Judgment affirmed.

H C. Shurtleff for the defendant.

Theriault & Hunt for the plaintiff.

WATSON C. J., POWERS, TAYLOR, MILES, and SLACK, JJ.

OPINION

POWERS

The only exception relied upon is to the admission of a group of photographs and photographic enlargements of certain disputed signatures. The defendant produced two receipted bills, which purported to bear the plaintiff's signatures. The latter denied these signatures and insisted that they were forgeries. The court, by whom the case was tried below, so found, relying in part, at least, upon the photographs and enlargements. The only objection to their admission was based upon the facts brought out in the cross-examination of the photographer that they showed certain things not on the originals, and that they were blurred, light-struck, overdeveloped, and spotted. That these conditions were, technically, photographic defects sufficiently appeared. But the only important things about them or the originals were the plaintiff's signatures and it also appeared that the conditions referred to, so far as they were of sufficient consequence to merit consideration, resulted from a purpose and desire to bring out more clearly the particulars and peculiarities of the questioned signatures. There is nothing to indicate that this purpose failed, or that any of the defects specified so affected the evidentiary value of the exhibits, so far as the signatures were concerned, as to make them inadmissible. The value of photographs and photographic enlargements of questioned signatures and documents is everywhere recognized. It is attested by this Court in Rowell v. Fuller's Estate, 59 Vt. 688, 10 A. 853. They must be properly verified, to be sure, which means that their accuracy must be vouched for by some competent person; but all that is required to make them admissible is that it shall be made to appear that they are sufficiently accurate to be of aid to the trier in ascertaining the truth. Hassam v. Safford Lumber Co., 82 Vt. 444, 74 A. 197. There was nothing in the so-called defects in those here in question...