Wiggins v. Norton

• Decision Date: 22 April 1889
• Citation: 9 S.E. 607,83 Ga. 148
• Parties: WIGGINS v. NORTON et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

9 S.E. 607

83 Ga. 148

WIGGINS v. NORTON et al.

Supreme Court of Georgia

April 22, 1889

Error from superior court, De Kalb county; R. H. CLARK, Judge.

Candler Thompson & Candler, for plaintiff in error.

Hopkins & Glenn, for defendants in error.

SIMMONS J.

Wiggins sued Norton and others for damages for false imprisonment. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants. Wiggins moved for a new trial on 14 grounds, which motion was overruled by the court, and he excepted.

1. The grounds from 1 to 11, inclusive, complain of the action of the court in admitting certain evidence. The court, in approving these grounds, qualifies his approval as follows "All exceptions to the action of the court as to what transpired during the progress of the case are subject to correction by the record of the proceedings, as made out by the stenographer and in the brief of evidence." Counsel for the defendants in error objected to the consideration by this court of these grounds of the motion, because the trial judge had not approved the same, as the law requires. We think the objection is well taken. The law requires the trial judge to approve the grounds of the motion for a new trial as true, either in the motion itself or in the bill of exceptions. In this case he has failed to approve them either in the motion for a new trial or in the bill of exceptions; the bill of exceptions containing the same qualified approval as above quoted. The judge says in his certificate that these grounds are subject to correction by the record of the proceedings as made out by the stenographer in the brief of evidence. This so-called "brief" of evidence contains 275 pages of closely written and printed matter. The constitution and laws of this state require us to hear and determine every case on our docket at the first term of the court, except in case of inability from providential cause or other exceptions specified by law. It is therefore impossible for us to undertake to read records 275 pages in length for the purpose simply of verifying the grounds of a motion for a new trial. The law does not put this burden upon us, and we shall not undertake to assume it. It is placed upon the trial judges. The law makes it their duty to verify the grounds of the motion for a new trial. Mayor v. Harris, 75 Ga. 761; Maynard v. Ponder, Id. 664.

But it was insisted by counsel for the plaintiff in error that counsel is powerless, where the judge refuses to give an express approval. We do not think so. If a judge refuses to approve the grounds of a motion for new trial as true when the same are true, the law provides a sufficient remedy for the movants to compel such approval. Anderson v. Faw, 79 Ga. 558, 4 S.E. 920. We therefore decline to consider these grounds of the motion.

2. We also decline to consider in this case the ground that the verdict is contrary to the evidence. As said before, this so-called "brief of evidence" contains 275 closely written and printed pages. It is made up in great part of questions of counsel, colloquies between counsel and the court, wranglings of counsel among themselves, the witticisms and sharp retorts of counsel and the witnesses, remarks of the stenographer, and page after page of repetitions, and of the most irrelevant matter I have ever observed in a record since I have been on this bench. We undertook to read it as a court, but, after reading it for several hours, we had, in justice to other matters, to desist. One of our number managed to glance through it in a hurried way, and it took him over a day to do so. We have repeatedly appealed to trial judges to desist from sending up such records as this to this court. In the case of Chambers v Walker, 6 S.E. 165 (decided in April of last year,) we made such an appeal, and said that, if counsel should...