Smith v. Young

99 So. 370, 134 Miss. 738, 35 A.L.R. 69, 1924 Miss. LEXIS 303
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 11, 1924
DocketNo. 23543
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 99 So. 370 (Smith v. Young) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Smith v. Young, 99 So. 370, 134 Miss. 738, 35 A.L.R. 69, 1924 Miss. LEXIS 303 (Mich. 1924).

Opinion

Sykes, P. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

This case is a contest over the alleged will of H. H. [754]*754Young, who was a citizen of .Clay county. Young was- a bachelor. A short time after his death, no will having been found, letters of administration were taken out upon his estate. Relatively speaking, Young was a wealthy man, and the estate in litigation is a large one.

Young died on December 5, 1921. For a number of years shortly prior to his death Gates T. Ivy, of West Point, Miss., had been his attorney. Hearing the general talk in the community that no will of Young had been found, Ivy stated to several people that some years before Young had executed a will in his office, and that he thought there was a carbon copy of it somewhere among Ms files. Pie and his stenographer, Miss Gates, instituted a search for the carbon copy, and an alleged copy was found by Miss Gates. This copy was shown, among others, to Mr. W. G. Roberds, attorney for the administrator of the estate. A few days thereafter, namely, on December 30,1921, these appellees, as beneficiaries under the will exhibited their petition in the chancery court, with a copy of this alleged carbon copy, praying to establish this lost will. One or two unimportant amendments were made to this petition.

Contestants (appellants in this court) in their answer denied the material allegations of the petition, denied that Young left a will, denied the execution by him of a will of which this was a copy, and further alleged that, even though he had made such a will, during his lifetime he had destroyed it (animo revocandi).

On April 14, 1922, the petitioners, with permission of court, exhibited their amended petition, in which they alleged that the original will of H. PI. Young had been found, reiterating, in substance, the averments of the .original petition, alleging the due execution and attestation of this original will, and asked that it be .probated in solemn form. The answer of contestants in substance denied the' signing, execution, and attestion of. the alleged will. In short, it denied that it was the last genuine will and testament of H; H. Young. An issue of [755]*755dcvisavit vel non was duly made by the court and submitted to the jury. This issue presents the single question as has been decided by this court in the case of Sheehan v. Kearney, 82 Miss. 688, 21 So. 41, 35 L. R. A. 102, and all other contested will cases of this nature, and that issue is, “Will or no will.”

’ The burden of proof to establish the validity is upon the proponents of the alleged will.

The will is short. The will and attestation clause are upon two separate pages of paper, both typewritten. The aheged signature of H. H. Young appears in ink near the bottom of the first page. On the second page the attesting witnesses are Gates T. Ivy and Carrie Hoover Malone. Their signatures are also written in ink under the attestation clause.

The jury returned a verdict in favor of the propo- ‘ nents, thereby holding that the will exhibited for probate was the last genuine will of H. H. Young, properly signed and executed by him, and properly attested in accordance with our statutes. Thereupon the chancellor entered a decree in accordance with the verdict of the jury, and further construed the will holding that there was a lapsed legacy, which it is unnecessary for us to discuss inasmuch as that question of law was properly decided by the chancellor. From which decree this appeal is prosecuted.

While there are a number of assignments of error argued, the principal one is that the verdict of the jury is contrary to the testimony; that the testimony demonstrates that the alleged signature of H. H. Young to . the alleged will is a forgery, and that the decree should be reversed, and a decree entered in this court to this effect. We shall therefore discuss this assignment of error first, which necessarily brings into review the testimony introduced in the trial before the jury.

The proponents first, placed upon the stand Gates T. Ivy. In substance he testified thát he had been in the active practice of law at West Point, Miss., since 1899; that he had known the deceased, H: H. Young, since he [756]*756(Ivy) was thirteen or fourteen years old; that Young was a bachelor at the time of his death; that he was Young’s attorney for a number of years, beginning possibly in 1914 or 1915, and so represented him until a short time before his death; that Young was a frequent caller at his office; that Young lent a good deal of money in Clay county, and owned extensive .property; that Young personally looked after his affairs; that on July 9, 1918, Young was of sound and disposing mind and memory, and executed the alleged will in question; that he (Ivy), at the instance and request of Young, dictated this will to his stenographer, Miss Malone, while he and Young were seated in the library roof of his office; that Miss Malone then retired to the stenographer’s room, and. a. short time thereafter returned with the will typewritten, whereupon Mr. Young, in the presence of Ivy and Miss Malone, signed the will, and they, in the presence of Young, and in the presence of each other, signed the attestation clause. The will in question was identified by Ivy as the will executed and signed in his office by Young. Ivy testified that he was to receive a contingent fee as attorney in the case in the event the will was probated in solemn form. The court would not permit the contestants to prove what this fee was to be.

Miss Carrie Hoover Malone, the next witness introduced by the proponents, testified that at the time the alleged will was written and executed she was working in the law office of Gates T. Ivy as stenographer. She fully corroborated in every detail the testimony of Ivy about the preparation, signing, execution, and attesting of the alleged will, and testified that the one offered for probate was the one signed and executed in the office of Ivy on the day in question. Shortly thereafter she left the employment of Ivy. She testified that the will was typewritten on a Remington typewriter, she did not recall any other machine being in the office at the time the will was written; that both typewritten pages were written on the same machine. She failed to identify as [757]*757the machine on which the will was written a Remington No. 10 typewriter introduced by contestants upon which typewriting was made in the presence of the jury. She stated that she did not think that was the machine upon which the will was written, because her recollection was that the machine had red tabulator stops, and the keys on the front were red. This was different from the Remington No. 10. This witness was in no wise interested in the. result of the issue.

L. J. Howard, chancery clerk of Clay county for fifteen years, testified that he was familiar with the signature of Young; had seen him write his signature frequently in satisfying deeds of trust; that he knew Young’s signature; that the signature on the will was the genuine signature of Young. He then identified a great number of signatures of Young appearing on the deed of trust records of Clay county.

A. B. Cotrell, assistant cashier of the First National Bank, knew the deceased, Young, during his lifetime, was familiar with his signature, and identified that on the will as the genuine signature of deceased. He then testified about Young doing a banking business .with him, and identified a number of checks containing the genuine signature of Young.

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Bluebook (online)
99 So. 370, 134 Miss. 738, 35 A.L.R. 69, 1924 Miss. LEXIS 303, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-v-young-miss-1924.