Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1841

Castor v. Bavington

Castor v. Bavington
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · Decided December 15, 1841
2 Watts & Serg. 505

Castor v. Bavington

Opinion of the Court

Per Curiam.

It is impossible to distinguish the principle of this case from that of Ellmaker v. Buckley, in which it was ruled that a party shall not introduce his case to the jury through a cross-examination of his adversary’s witnesses. Here the attempt was plainly to cross-examine to matter entirely new, with a view, not to test the truth of the witness as to what he had said-&emdash;the legitimate end of a cross-examination&emdash;but to lay his defence before the jury untrammelled by the rules of a direct examination; and this certainly cannot be done. The questions were, therefore, properly suppressed.

Judgment affirmed.

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