Chapman v. Chapman

1 S.E.2d 697, 59 Ga. App. 602, 1939 Ga. App. LEXIS 370
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedMarch 4, 1939
Docket27293
StatusPublished

This text of 1 S.E.2d 697 (Chapman v. Chapman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Chapman v. Chapman, 1 S.E.2d 697, 59 Ga. App. 602, 1939 Ga. App. LEXIS 370 (Ga. Ct. App. 1939).

Opinion

MacIntyre, J.

A verdict and judgment were rendered in favor of the defendant in the court below. Thereafter, on the same day, a motion for new trial was filed and service was acknowledged by the attorney of record for the defendant on that date. On [603]*603August 13, 1938, the judge overruled the motioD for new trial. On August 29, 1938, the bill of exceptions was presented, it was duly certified September 2, 1938, and on September 9, the attorney of record for the defendant acknowledged due and legal service of the bill of exceptions, waived copy, notice, time, process, and all and further notice. The bill of exceptions was filed in this court on September 22, 1938, and up to this point the record did not disclose affirmatively or otherwise the death of the defendant in the court below, or that any of the parties or the court knew of the same. However, on November 12, 1938, the attorney of record for the defendant in the court below filed a motion in this court to dismiss the bill of exceptions on the ground that Mrs. G. D. Ohapmap, the defendant in the court below and the defendant in error in this court, had died between the time the verdict and judgment were rendered (they being in her favor) and the time of the hearing of the motion for new trial, and had never been made a party to the proceeding. This motion to dismiss was served on the plaintiff in error on November 11, 1938. On November 12, 1938, a motion was made in this court by the plaintiff in error to make the defendant’s temporary administrator a party defendant in error here, and attached to his motion was a voluntary consent by the temporary administrator to become a partjr, and he (the temporary administrator) waived notice, time, place, process, copy and all other and further notice. Thus the record is on its face entirely regular until November 12, 1938, when the motion to dismiss was filed in this court on account of the death of the defendant in the court below two days prior to the hearing of the motion for new trial. The bill of exceptions recites that the plaintiff in the court below is the plaintiff in error in this court, naming him, and that the defendant in the court below is the defendant in error in this coirrt naming her. “Necessary defendants to a bill of exceptions, who have not been served, may appear by themselves, or counsel appearing of record, or- whose representation is not contested, acknowledge service and consent for the case to proceed.” Craig v. Webb, 70 Ga. 188; Clark v. Pigeon Roost Mining Co., 29 Ga. 29; Western Union Tel. Co. v. Griffith, 111 Ga. 551, 557 (36 S. E. 859); Code, §§ 6-911, 6-1201. “The death of a party to a case pending in this court [Court of Appeals] may be suggested by counsel for either side at any time in open court. . . The legal representative of [604]*604the deceased party may voluntarily become a party to the case at any time. . . A temporary administrator will be regarded in this court as a competent party.” Code, § 24-3641..

“Proof of the existence at a particular time of a fact of a continuous nature gives rise to an inference, within logical limits, that it exists at a subsequent time.” 22 C. J. 86, § 28. The defendant having been proved to be in life at the time of the verdict and judgment, there is a presumption within logical and legal limits, until the contrary be shown, that he still lives on the date of the overruling of the motion for new trial. In the instant case, the record indicates that the court and all of its officers and the attorneys for both parties were acting on the presumption that the defendant was still living, and it so happened that everything that was done by the court at the hearing of the motion for new trial was done in favor of the deceased defendant, for the court overruled the motion for new trial. The overruling of the motion certainly did not harm the defendant, and when the matter of the defendant’s death was first called to this court’s attention, steps were taken to preserve the rights of the defendant and a temporary administrator was appointed for her estate, and, thereupon, the temporary administrator asked that he be made a party as such administrator and that the case proceed and that it be tried upon its merits in this court, probably realizing that all that had been done since the unknown death of the defendant was in her favor, and that it would be useless and expensive to the defendant to have the court retrace its steps if it could or should do so. If the action of the court while in ignorance of the defendant’s death had been hurtful, and the temporary administrator of the deceased had refused to waive anything, a different question might be presented.

In Felker v. Still, 158 Ga. 343 (123 S. E. 303), the record discloses that Carter, the executor of W. L. Boss, died and that the court allowed an amendment that “J. T. Still administrator de bonis non with will annexed of W. L. Boss estate be and he is hereby made party plaintiff in this ease that the same proceed in his name as plaintiff herein,” all of which happened before verdict and judgment. Thus, the executor Carter, who originally brought the suit, died before the verdict and judgment were rendered, and when the petition was amended so that J. T. Still, the administrator, was made the party plaintiff in the case, the case proceeded in [605]*605his name, and by allowing the amendment Carter was in effect stricken from the case by action of the court itself and was no longer a party, and when the plaintiff in error undertook to carry the case up by specifically naming Carter as the only defendant in error the case was dismissed in the Supreme Court on motion, which seems to us proper in view of the fact that the court had in effect adjudicated, before the suing out of the bill of exceptions, by allowing the amendment, that there was no such person as Carter, and that Carter was dead and was no longer a party. Thus it affirmatively appeared from the record that at the time the bill of exceptions was sued out there was no party defendant in error. In Orr v. Webb, 112 Ga. 806 (5) (38 S. E. 98), which is the case upon which the Supreme Court relied as authority for the FelTcer case, supra, the opinion itself states that “it affirmatively appears that before the trial took place in the court below he had died and his name was accordingly stricken from the plaintiff’s petition.”

Thus the court itself had ruled that the defendant in error was no longer a party to the case, because he was dead and his administrator had been made a party in his stead, and when the court had found that he was no longer a party to the case, this foreclosed the matter unless reviewed or reversed. Whereas, in the instant case, no such question was presented to the court below, nor was .any such question in any way adjudicated prior to the suing out of the bill of exceptions, and the question as to whether or not the defendant in error is living or dead is for the first time presented to a court, this court, for an adjudication as to whether or not the record can be so amended as to allow the case to proceed in the name of W. V. Chapman, temporary administrator of the deceased. We think the record clearly shows who were the parties to the litigation in the court below. The defendant had not been stricken as a party, for it does not affirmatively appear that the court knew or that any one whose duty it was to inform the court knew of her death.

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Related

Clark v. Pigeon Roost Mining Co.
29 Ga. 29 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1859)
Craig v. Webb
70 Ga. 188 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1883)
Bosworth v. Hightower
73 Ga. 46 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1884)
Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Griffith
36 S.E. 859 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1900)
Orr v. Webb
38 S.E. 98 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1901)
Purvis v. Raste
85 S.E. 1012 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1915)
Felker v. Still
123 S.E. 303 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1924)
Izlar v. Central of Georgia Railway Co.
134 S.E. 315 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1926)
McMillan v. Spencer
134 S.E. 921 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1926)
Henson v. Federal Land Bank of Columbia
134 S.E. 923 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1926)
Willcox v. Beechwood Band Mill Co.
143 S.E. 405 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1928)
Sheboygan Machine Co. v. Brooks Oil Co.
164 S.E. 182 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1932)
Waters v. Durrence
182 S.E. 186 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1935)
Greenwood v. Greenwood
163 S.E. 317 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1932)

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Bluebook (online)
1 S.E.2d 697, 59 Ga. App. 602, 1939 Ga. App. LEXIS 370, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/chapman-v-chapman-gactapp-1939.