Den ex dem. Mickle v. Dunham
Den ex dem. Mickle v. Dunham
Opinion of the Court
In this case the plaintiff was nonsuited at the Circuit, for want of confession of lease, entry and ouster. The defendants have moved that the judgment he not, according to the stipulation of the consent rule, entered against the casual ejector, but that the nonsuit be set aside, because the certificate of the clerk of this court subjoined to the transcript, that the same contains a true copy of the declaration and pleadings in the cause, bears date prior to the next preceding Circuit Court of the couuty in which the venue is laid. This objection to the date of the certificate, or perhaps more correctly speaking, to the time of sealing the transcript, is founded on the practice of the court of K. B. in England, and on the ancient practice of this court prior to our statute, passed in 1799, and now in force, relative to the Circuit Courts. The change however, which that statute introduced in the mode of making up the JYisi Prius record or transcript, removed the cause and reason of the practice referred to, and therefore saves the certificate in this case from the force of the objection raised against it.
A view of the English practice, compared with our statute, will lead satisfactorily to this conclusion.
Our mode, however, of making up the Nisi Prius record or transcript, is much more simple and the matters to be contained in it are much fewer in number. The statute directs “ that when a cause is to be tried at a Circuit'Court, a transcript of the declaration and pleadings in the cause, with a proper placiia, and nothing more, shall be made and sent under the seal of the Supreme Court to the said Circuit Court.” Rev. Laws 454. A jurata is neither requisite nor admissible. The time and place at which the issue is to be tried, are not set forth on the face of the transcript. No incongruity can therefore exist, as in the case of the Nisi Prius record, between it and the postea in respect to the time of trial. Hence the transcript, if the trial does not take place when at first expected, needs no alteration to prepare it for trial at a future day, and therefore when once sealed, needs not again to be resealed. When once properly made out and sealed, it contains all that is requisite whensoever the trial may occur, unless when some matter happens after the joining of issue ; or after the transcript has been made out, which for the sake of regularity or congruity ought to appear on the face of the transcript. Thus, it is said, that if one of several plaintiffs os defendants dies after issue joined, the .cause of action surviving, and a suggestion is made, that a proper entry should appear on the transcript so as to direct the judge at the Circuit, between whom the issue is to be tried; and so of other matter. And hence it has been argued that the certificate of the transcript should bear date, and be sealed subsequent to the last preceding term of this court. But admitting, that these matters ought to bo inserted in the transcript, no other consequence results than that the plaintiff should cause his transcript to be made out after they liave occurred, so as to contain them, or, if once made out, and the cause not being tried, they afterwards occur, he may then have occasion to procure another transcript, and in this respect as in any other, if the transcript omits what it ought to contain, he may expose his verdict to jeopardy. But it by no means follows, when no such extraordinary occurrence has taken place,
Motion to set aside nonsuit refused:
Reference
- Full Case Name
- JOHN DEN ex dem. SAMUEL MICKLE against JOHN DUNHAM AND JOHN RAMBO
- Status
- Published