Taylor v. McClintock

• Decision Date: 22 June 1908
• Parties: TAYLOR v. MCCLINTOCK
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

112 S.W. 405

87 Ark. 243

TAYLOR v. MCCLINTOCK

Supreme Court of Arkansas

June 22, 1908

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] [Copyrighted Material Omitted] [Copyrighted Material Omitted] [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Appeal from Pulaski Circuit Court; Edward W. Winfield, Judge; reversed.

This is a contest over the validity of a will executed by Dr C. M. Taylor, who died April 15, 1905, leaving a widow, Julia P. Taylor, two children of the marriage with her, and a married daughter by a former marriage, Mrs. Maude J. McClintock.

Soon after his death his widow and the Union Trust Company presented to the probate court a document purporting to be his last will, executed by him on March 2, 1904, and naming them as executors and trustees. In this will Dr. Taylor gave to Mrs. McClintock $ 5000, and left the residue of his estate, consisting of land and personal property estimated to be worth $ 500,000, to his children by the second marriage, subject to the widow's dower.

The will was duly admitted to probate in common form. Thereafter in due time Mrs. McClintock appealed from the probate court to the circuit court, where she set forth as her ground of contest that Dr. Taylor, at the time he executed the will, was not of sufficiently sound and disposing mind to qualify him to make a will. On this issue there was much testimony tending to show that the testator entertained an insane delusion that his daughter, Mrs. McClintock, did not love him. There was also much testimony in rebuttal. This was the issue upon which the case was tried.

Numerous exceptions to the rulings of the court in admitting or rejecting evidence were taken by the proponents. These exceptions are numbered and referred to in appellant's brief as follows:

The trial court refused to permit Miss Jordan, a witness for contestants, to answer the following question: "Don't you know it to be a fact that in that matter (meaning the suit of the Jordan heirs against Dr. Taylor) very great bitterness of feeling grew up on account of the difference between Colonel Johnson and Dr. Taylor, in which your feelings entered?"

Mrs. McClintock, the contestant, was permitted to testify as to certain transactions or conversations with the testator.

The court permitted contestant's husband to testify that he made a copy of a letter which she wrote to her father, dated May 7, 1895, and thereupon admitted the copy in evidence.

The court permitted contestant to answer the question of her counsel, "In this letter it is stated that you failed to give your father your confidence when you were with him; please state if the statement in the letter is correct?" which she said was not correct; and also permitted her to answer the question, "I wish you to state what your course was in regard to advising and informing your father of your relation with Mr. McClintock during the entire period of your correspondence and engagement to him before your marriage," her answer being, "I was perfectly frank and sincere with him."

The court permitted contestant to ask, and Miss Didlake to answer, the following question: "Did she (Mrs. McClintock) exhibit at any time any greater fondness for any person than she did for her father?" her answer being, "She did not."

The court allowed C. M. Alford, a witness, to answer two questions as follows: "Do you think you have sufficient knowledge of Mr. McClintock's character and reputation in the community in which he lives to speak in regard to his standing at the time this marriage took place? what was Mr. McClintock's standing and reputation in the community where he lived and in that neighborhood? "--his answer being, "Very excellent, commercially and socially." There was no proof that Dr. Taylor knew McClintock's reputation.

The objections urged to the admission of the evidence of Alford apply to the admission of similar evidence of George B. Nelson and Charles McKee.

The court permitted Colonel S. B. Johnson to answer two questions asked him, for the purpose of showing what property the contestant's mother owned, and what property passed to Dr. Taylor that had belonged to her. His testimony was that she left property worth from $ 100,000 to $ 105,000, and that Dr. Taylor lived on the place which had been hers from her death until 1900. It is contended that this testimony introduced a foreign element in the case, and that it shed no light upon Dr. Taylor's sanity.

At the close of Colonel Johnson's testimony, the proponents moved to strike out all of it relating to the property of contestant's mother before her death, and her estate after her death, and to the condition thereof, on the ground that it was incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; but the court overruled the motion.

The court allowed Dr. Pope and other experts, in testifying, to argue the fallacies in Dr. Taylor's mistake upon moral questions, particularly the right of a daughter to marry when and whom she would.

Thus, in answer to questions as to the ground upon which he based his opinion as to the testator's incapacity, Dr. Pope stated:

"In the first place, the fact that he had a delusion would be based upon the truth that his daughter was not without love and affection for her father, and therefore his entertaining the idea that she was without love and affection, that she was ungrateful and undutiful, would be false, and it would therefore be a false belief held against such proof and evidence as would ordinarily be accepted by the average individual. That would be one of the reasons why I should think that he was not of sound mind. In the next place, I do not think that Dr. Taylor was of sound mind concerning his daughter because he did not take a healthy view of what his daughter's rights were. He didn't seem to understand and appreciate for one minute that a woman--or a man, for that matter, and more particularly a woman than a man--has the right, the legitimate, moral right, to look forward to the making of a home of her own. I would say that they have a legitimate right to marry, and that a father basing his objections to a marriage with a proper party, against whom there are no objections, and whose sole objection urged is not the securing of the happiness of his daughter by the marriage, but the only slight discomfort that might follow him, is evidently controlled by his own delusional ideas of what is his right rather than hers."

Judge U. M. Rose was called to testify as to Dr. Taylor's sanity, and to qualify him was asked to state the general character of the issues in a certain lawsuit wherein Dr. Taylor did all of the work of preparing the case, such as looking up the witnesses, and ascertaining what their evidence would be, in order to show what Dr. Taylor did and the manner of his performance. An objection to the question was sustained.

Captain W. H. Cooper, who knew Dr. Taylor for more than thirty years, after testifying that he never saw anything in Dr. Taylor to indicate weakness or unbalancing of the mind, was asked if he ever heard it brought in question until after his death. He was not allowed to answer it.

For the purpose of contradicting Dr. Taylor's statements in some of his letters that during certain years he had made no money farming in Lincoln County, a witness, Dr. O. P. Robinson, was permitted to testify that he found farming profitable in Pulaski County.

Oscar Davis, cashier of German National Bank, when testifying as to his observations of Dr. Taylor, stated that he was very painstaking, accurate, methodical and exacting, and that as a bank director he went to extremes by seeking information of bookkeepers that he should have got from the cashier. He was asked if Dr. Taylor had not been previously held liable as director of another bank which failed, the object being to show that he was held liable because he accepted the statements of the officers, instead of going to the books. The court refused to permit the witness to answer this question.

Captain Watkins was asked whether he understood that Dr. Taylor owned certain lands in 1863 or earlier, but was not allowed to answer.

The court refused to permit proponents to ask John Fletcher, the attorney who drafted the will, whether he intended to reduce the benefit contestant would receive when he suggested to Dr. Taylor that he substitute an absolute gift of $ 10,000 for the annuity named when giving his first directions as to the will; the witness having testified that he could not remember the amount of the annuity indicated by Dr. Taylor.

The court refused to permit proponents to show that the estate of Dr. Jordan, who was the first husband of Dr. Taylor's first wife, contestant's mother, was insolvent, paying but a small dividend to the creditors. By this proponents sought to rebut any imputation that Dr. Taylor acquired his fortune through his first wife.

The court permitted contestant to ask Mrs. Taylor this question: "Did you send his daughter, Mrs. McClintock, any notice of his illness?" She answered that she did not, and stated her reasons for not doing so.

In order to show the magnitude of Dr. Jordan's estate, a witness was permitted to state that "in 1863 they burned 3000 bales of cotton belonging to him."

Dr. Broemer, a medical expert, was asked to suppose that Dr. Taylor had been in the first stages of paranoia as early as 1880, when he was about 50 years of age, that he had lived after the disease developed 24 years. Upon that supposition he was asked what difficulty his friends, family and acquaintances would have experienced in detecting that he was insane between the years 1895 and 1904. The question was excluded.

Upon cross-examination of Drs. Green and Dibrell, each of whom stated that he was a physician in general practice and had never made a specialty...