Phebus v. Vinson

166 P. 1087, 64 Okla. 241
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJuly 10, 1917
DocketNo. 7987
StatusPublished

This text of 166 P. 1087 (Phebus v. Vinson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Phebus v. Vinson, 166 P. 1087, 64 Okla. 241 (Okla. 1917).

Opinion

SHARP, C. J.

December 21, 1911, Enos Nichols, a resident of Pottawatomie county, died in Shawnee, Olcla., possessed of an estate consisting of personal property of the value of approximately $300,000. On the petitions of Alex Fisher, husband of Nellie Fisher, and Harriet Nichols Cook, grand-niece and niece, respectively, of Enos Nichols, deceased, the county court of Pottawatomie county on January 29, 1912, appointed Alex Fisher administrator of the estate. Immediately thereafter said Fisher qualified and entered upon the discharge of his duties as administrator. February 11, 1913, Harriet Nichols Cook filed in the county court of Pottawatomie county her petition, in which she claimed to be the sole heir at law and next of kin of Enos Nichols, deceased, and asked to have her rights as such heir determined and adjudicated. Pending said proceedings, and on April 28, 1913, Harriet Nichols Cook died testate in the city of Salem, state of New Jersey. In the month of May following her will was admitted to probate in the surrogate’s court of the cqunty of Salem, N. J., and letters testamentary were issued to J. Warren Davis, as executor of said last will and testament. On June 5, 1913, upon ancillary proceedings filed in the county court of Pottawatomie county, J. Warren Davis was appointed executor of the last will and testament of Harriet Nichols Cook, deceased, in Pottawatomie county, and on September 12th, following, as such executors was substituted as a party to the heirship proceedings instituted in the lifetime of Harriet Nichols Cook. A hearing on said proceedings being had on November 21,1913, it was found that said Harriet Nichols Cook at the time of her death was the sole heir at law of Enos Nichols, deceased. On the same day, Etta Phebus, of Pittsfield, Ill., filed in the county court of Pottawatomie county, her petition charging that Enos Nichols, deceased, at the time of his death left a will bearing date on or about the 2d day of September, 1898, which will, it was charged, had been -“unavoidably lost”; that by the terms of said lost will, the said Enos Nichols made various bequests of his estate to diveys parties in different sums. Thereafter an amendment to said petition was filed, and, the issues being joined on said petition, after hearing had on October 5, 1914, judgment was rendered and decree entered by G. A. Outcelt, acting as special judge of the county court, admitting to probate said alleged lost will. From the decree an appeal was prosecuted by the contestants to the superior court of Pottawatomie county, and filed therein November 12, 1914. November ¿3th following, Willard J. Barnett, of Shawnee, was by the county court appointed administrator of the -estate with the will annexed, and duly qualified on November 20, 1914. On January 2, 1915, J. Warren Davis, as executor of the last will and testament of Harriet Nichols Cook, deceased, in his own behalf and on the behalf of all the contestants, filed in the superior court a motion to transfer the cause to the district court. ’ Among the files included in the case-made is a purported motion of the proponents, Etta Phebus and others, to transfer the cause to the district court of Pottawatomie county on the ground that the superior court was -without jurisdiction in the premises. This motion does not appear to bear the file mark of the clerk of the. superior court. However, on the minute book of the superior court is contained an entry denying the application of the pro[243]*243ponents of the will for leave to withdraw their motion to transfer, and a further entry sustaining the motions filed by “objectors and proponents” and ordering the clerk to transfer the papers forthwith, and to ■which the proponents excepted. On the same day appears an order transferring said cause to the district court, with instructions to the clerk to transfer the papers and files in the cause, together with a complete transcript of the proceedings had, to the clerk of the district court. The motion of the contestants appears to have been filed in the district court on January 4, 1915, and that of the proponents on January 5, 1915. On March 12, 1915, attorneys for proponents filed in the district court their special appearance and motion to remand the cause to the superior court on the ground that the order of transfer was made on the motion of the contestants. June 10, 1915, a supplemental motion to remand was filed by the proponents on the ground that the superior court had, 'on May 24, 1915, entered an order vacating and setting aside the order of January 2, 1915, transferring the cause to the district court, and in which subsequent order or judgment of the superior court the appeal prosecuted by the contestants from the decree of the county court was dismissed. Thereafter, on the 10th day of July, 1915, a further motion termed a "supplemental petition” was filed in the district court, protesting against the jurisdiction of said court on account of. the subsequent proceedings had in the superior court. The several motions and petitions, as well as the objections offered ore tenus, were by the court overruled, and after hearing it was adjudged that the purported lost will of Enos Nichols, deceased, be denied probate, and that the order and decree of the county court probating said will be reversed, vacated, annulled, and set aside; that a certified copy of the findings of fact by the court and the decree be transmitted to the county court, and that said court be ordered and directed to proceed with the distribution of the estate in accordance with the decree of heir-ship and distribution made November 21, 1918.

The case is brought to this court for review, the only point reserved being that the district court was without jurisdiction in the rendition of its final decree, or, as stated in the record: ■

“The appeal in this ease :is taken on questions of jurisdiction only, * * * and the foregoing pages of this case contain a statement of all the proceedings and other matters in the action of the trial court as are necessary to present all the jurisdictional questions raised in the trial court, and errors complained of, and the jurisdictional question raised in this court for review.”

The record upon which it is relied to present the questions of jurisdiction is incomplete, and it is difficult to know with certainty all of the proceedings had either in the superior or district court. The briefs contain no assignments of error as provided by the rules of the court. The form of presentation is therefore very unsatisfactory, and has entailed upon the court much labor that could easily have been avoided. In the original brief of the plaintiffs in error it is said that the challenge to the jurisdiction of the district court is based on three propositions, the statement of -which may be abbreviated as follows: (1) That on October. 1914, an appeal in a probate proceeding would not lie from the county court to the superior court; (2) that on January 2, 1915, there was no law authorizing the transfer of a probate case from the superior court to the district court; (3) that prior to the time the district court “assumed .to act” the superior court had set aside the order of transfer and dismissed -the appeal from the county court.

In the reply brief of plaintiffs in error, it is stated that, although there are many questions urged in the brief, “there is but one proposition for this court to consider.” The one question referred to, as we understand, is that the cause was never in fact transferred from the superior court; that such being the case, the district court was bound by the subsequent judgment or order of the superior court in which the order of transfer was vacated and set aside and the appeal from the county court dismissed.

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Bluebook (online)
166 P. 1087, 64 Okla. 241, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/phebus-v-vinson-okla-1917.