Keeler v. Hoyt
Keeler v. Hoyt
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court:
Lucius W. Hoyt, an attorney at law, entered into a contract with the plaintiff in error, wherein Mr. Hoyt agreed to act as attorney in a suit, about to be instituted,
After Mr. Hoyt’s death, the executrix brought an action against the plaintiff in error to recover for the services rendered by Mr. Hoyt under the contract, and obtained a judgment for $1,190.00, which was the $1,000.00 provided for and the accumulated interest. But two questions are discussed in the brief.
1. For the purpose of proving the result in the supreme court in the suit mentioned in the contract, there was offered and admitted as testimony, for the executrix the reported decision of the case of Manly v. The Board of County Commissioners of Pueblo County, reported in Vol. 46 of the Colo. Rep., p. 491, which was the. suit referred to in the contract as about to be instituted. This was objected to on the ground that it was not the proper way to prove the action of this court. It is claimed that the record of the court, or a certified copy thereof, should have been introduced. The reports of the supreme court of this state are published, by the authority and at the command of law, as the official opinions of the court. As the contract specified that the attorney should receive
2. It is nest claimed that the evidence failed to show that Mr. Hoyt had complied with the contract. The opinion in the 46 Colo, states that three objections were raised in this court as to the validity of the bonds, and, after a discussion of those objections, it was held that each of them was untenable, and the judgment of the district court, which had refused to enjoin the issuance of the bonds, was affirmed. It is claimed that holding bonds valid against three objections does not uphold their validity as against other objections which might have been raised, and which this court did not dispose of. It is true that an attorney should be held to a strict compliance with any contract of employment he may make with a client, and that such a contract should be construed most favorably to the interests of the client as stated in the authorities cited in the brief. But to hold in this case that the contract was not complied with would be carrying
To rebut this prima facie case, all that was attempted was to show, by the plaintiff in error, that the latter had himself, after the decision in this court, raised certain objections to the bonds that had not been passed upon. That was clearly incompetent. The record is not quite clear, but it may be that there was an attempt to show that someone else had raised some of these objections also. This was incompetent. Objections could have been easily raised by anyone. The raising of objections would not prove the invalidity of the bonds, nor that this court had not upheld their validity. A party to such a contract can not defeat it in such a self-serving way as raising objections, and claiming that these objections had not been passed upon by the court. As we read the record, it was only attempted to show that the objections had been raised by the plaintiff in error and perhaps by some other person, and it was not attempted to show that the facts existed upon which the objections were supposed to be based. If it be claimed that this is what was attempted, the answer is, that because those facts occurred and existed before the death of Mr. Hoyt, the plaintiff in error, by reason of the statute, was not a competent witness to prove them, for he was the defendant in the case brought
Judgment affirmed.
Mr. Justice Gabbert and Mr. Justice Hilt, concur.
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