Central Trust Co. v. Dong Team Chew
Central Trust Co. v. Dong Team Chew
Opinion of the Court
This is a will contest. A Chinese, Dong Ling Hing, generally known as D. L. H. D. Grover, a resident of Park City, Utah, died February 11, 1926, at the age of 63 leaving a substantial estate. Upon application for probate of the estate of the deceased, Dong Team Chew, also known as Joe Grover, the reputed son of the deceased, was in February, 1926, appointed as administrator and thereafter qualified and has continued to act as such administrator to the present time. In March, 1927, the Central Trust Company, a corporation, filed a document purporting to be the last will and testament of the deceased, wherein Mrs. Annie Levey is named as executrix and as sole beneficiary, and petitioned the court for the probate of such document as the last will and testament of the deceased. Mrs. Annie Levey, the per
We are met at the threshold with a motion of the respondent to strike the bill of exceptions on the ground that the bill was not served within the time provided by Comp. Laws Utah 1917, § 6969, as amended by Laws of Utah 1925, chap. 51.
The motion for a new trial was overruled January 2, 1929, and notice of appeal served July 1, 1929. The court, on timely applications, extended the time within which the bill of exceptions might be served, filed and settled up to and including August 31, 1929. The bill was served, filed and settled August 29, 1929, within the time allowed. It is the contention of respondent that the amendment of 1925 imposed a limitation on the discretionary power of the court to enlarge the time within which a bill of exceptions might be served, filed, and settled, and fixed that limit at thirty days after service of notice of appeal. This question was settled in Hurd v. Ford, 74 Utah 46, 276 P. 908, wherein we held that the trial court acted within its power in granting an extension of time beyond the thirty-day period after service of notice of appeal as provided in the amendment of 1925. We see no reason for now placing a different construction upon this statute. The motion to strike the bill of exceptions is denied.
The chief issue before the court is the validity of the purported will, whether it was duly and lawfully executed
“That the said Dong Team Chew is the son of the said Dong Ling Hing, deceased; that he was born in Canton, China, about the eighth day of July, 1902; that he was received and entered into the United States, by the Immigration Department of the United States Government, as the son of the said Dong Ling Hing on or about the thirty-first day of May, 1918; that he was so received and entered into the United States as a citizen thereof upon the application of said Dong Ling Hing; that immediately upon his entry into the United States the said Dong Team Chew, contestant herein, went to Park City, Utah, together with his father, the said Dong Ling Hing, and took up his residence at that place with the said Dong Ling Hing; that at all times thereafter until his death the said Dong Ling Hing continuously held out to his friends and to the public that contestant was his son; that at all times after the entry of Dong Team Chew into this country the relations between the said Dong Ling Hing and said Dong Team Chew were friendly, the association between them at all times being that of father and son; that at the time of the death of the said Dong Ling Hing, contestant was residing with him at Park City, Utah.
“That at the time of the hearing on said petition for probate and said objections thereto Edward Fitzpatrick, who appears as an attesting witness to said alleged will, was dead, and Barnard Duffy, also appearing as an attesting witness thereto, was residing in Ireland, of the Kingdom of Great Britain; that the deposition of said Barnard Duffy was not taken, and the only witness produced by said proponent as to the execution of said alleged will was Mrs. Annie Levey, who, by the terms of said alleged will, is made the sole beneficiary thereof.
“The Court finds that the said Dong Ling Hing was illiterate; that he could neither read nor write the English language; that said alleged will is a typewritten instrument in the English language; that said instrument was not read to him; that he did not know the contents thereof; that he did not sign said alleged will; that he did not sign said alleged will knowing the contents or the purport thereof.
*329 “The Court further finds that neither of said' attesting witnesses, Barnard Duffy and Edward Fitzpatrick, signed said instrument as the will of the said Dong Ling Hing or knowing the same to be the will of the said Dong Ling Hing; that the said Dong Ling Hing did not declare to them or either of them that said instrument was his will; that the said Dong Ling Hing did not request said attesting witnesses, or either of them, to sign said alleged will or to witness the same; that neither the said Barnard Duffy nor said Edward Fitzpatrick signed said instrument in the presence of or at the request of the said Dong Ling Hing; that they did not sign said instrument in the presence of each other.
“That said alleged will is undated; that the said Annie Levy testified at the hearing of this cause that the same was executed in the late summer or early fall of either the years 1919 or 1920; that the said Annie Levy was not in any way related to the said deceased and said deceased was not, at the time of the alleged execution of said will, in any way obligated to her.”
These findings are assailed as not being supported by the evidence.
This is a law action triable by jury had either of the parties chosen to have it so tried. In such a case this court cannot weigh and pass on conflicting evidence, or pass on the credibility of witnesses. We are restricted to a review and determination of errors of law and the competency and sufficiency of the evidence to support the findings. The document offered for probate is not admitted to be the will of the deceased. Both the execution and attestation thereof are denied. The burden of proof was on the proponent of the will to establish by preponderance of the evidence both the lawful execution by the testator, and attestation thereof by the witnesses.
We shall first consider the finding that Dong Team Chew, or Joe Grover, was a son of Dong Ling Hing. The deceased was a Chinese, born in San Francisco, and therefore a citizen of the United States of America. Twice he had gone to. China, where he had married three women and where several children were born to him. He returned to the United States the last time in 1902 and went to Park City, where he had previously lived. He seems to have engaged in the
“Mr. Wilson (Attorney for Contestant) : The affidavit of D. Grover, however, is, I take it, competent evidence as a declaration.
“Mr. Bay (Attorney Mr. Paul Ray, representing the Proponent) : Oh yes.
“The Court: Yes, I think so. That is of Grover, Sr.
“Mr. Wilson: Yes.
“Mr. Ray: That might. Such evidence as that is competent, if properly authenticated or properly produced. I will admit the declarations of the father may be received.”
This we think a correct application of the law, since certainly declarations of an ancestor are admissible in evidence as affecting pedigree. 3 Jones, Comm, on Evidence (2d Ed.) 1131.
The affidavit and declarations of the father were competent and were properly received in evidence. They come
The execution and attestation of the will depends almost entirely upon the testimony of Mrs. Annie Levey, the sole beneficiary. There is some evidence tending to show the signature of the deceased as genuine and that the signatures of the subscribing witnesses were also genuine. Neither of the subscribing witnesses were produced at the trial. One, Edward Fitzgerald, was dead, and the other, Barnard Duffy, was not within the jurisdiction. He had some time prior to the time of trial left the United States and was then residing in Ireland. Mrs. Levey, at the time of trial, was 46 years of age. She was born in Ireland, was married, and lived with her husband, a night watchman at one of the mines near Park City. She had for many years conducted a boarding house. The two attesting witnesses
Mrs. Levey testified that Grover owed her money (the exact amount is not clearly shown unless it be the $150 which was merged in the judgment obtained by her husband in the suit just referred to), and that on the evening before the will was executed Grover came to her house and told her he was going to make a will and that she would get her money back. At the time of this conversation no one was present except Grover, Mrs. Levey, and her eight year old daughter. At the time of trial this daughter was sixteen years of age but was not produced as a witness. The date of the will is not definitely fixed other than that it was on an afternoon in the fall of either 1919 or 1920. The will itself is not dated. Mrs. Levey testified that Grover came to her house with Barnard Duffy and Edward Fitzpatrick. She said:
“He came in and went into the sitting room and the boys also, and he said, he pulled out a long envelope and he said he had his will and the boys and him was going to sign it. * * * And he took a little table over the window and he asked me to get him a pen and ink, and I got him pen and ink, and he sat down at one side of the table and took out the paper and wrote his name on it and he handed it across the table to Barnard Duffy and Barnard read it — he didn’t read it loud, he read it to himself — and he signed his name on it. Then he got up and Edward Fitzpatrick came from a chair over that way and took that chair and lifted the paper and read it and signed his name on it, and then the Chinaman took it over and put it in the envelope and he gave it to me and I took it out of the envelope and read it. I was standing at the edge of the table. He told' me to keep it.”
The signature of Grover on the will is pen-printed in capital letters and not in ordinary writing. This was fol
At the time of Grover’s death Mrs. Levey was in Ireland. It seems she learned of his death from Barnard Duffy, who wrote her inclosing a clipping from a local paper telling of his death. She had, previous to leaving the United States, left the will with her attorney, Mr. W. W. Ray in Salt Lake City. Some correspondence passed between her and Mr. Ray’s office, with the result that Mr. Rawlins, a partner of Mr. Ray, went to Park City with the will and interviewed both the subscribing witnesses. Mr. Rawlins was called as a witness by the proponent of the will in rebuttal after the contestant had rested. We refer to his testimony in this sequence because the interviews he had with Duffy and Fitzpatrick were had before and not after
“And I had the original of this will and I asked him if that was' his signature, referring to the signature appearing at the bottom ‘Witness: Edward Fitzpatrick,’ and he looked at it and said, ‘Yes.’ I then asked him, I could not tell exactly the same questions, but the questions I would ask a witness on proving a will, that is, the testamentary, the terms of the testamentary clause. His answers to those questions—
“Mr. Wilson: Just state what they were?
“A. Well, I can’t state exactly. I know I asked him whether he signed this at the request of the testator, and I think he said, ‘No.’ I asked him whether he signed it in his presence, and I think he said, ‘No.’ And I asked him whether he signed it in the presence of Barnard Duffy. My memory is he said ‘No.’ I probably asked him whether he signed it at the request of D. Grover, and I think he said ‘No.’ I don’t remember all of them but I know his answers were negative largely to the questions I asked with respect to the testamentary clause.
“Q. Now, after he had identified his signature, did he read the will? A. He read the will. He said, ‘What is it?’ after he had said that that was his signature, and I told him it purported to be a last will of Grover, and he said, ‘Let me look at it,’ as I remember, and he read the will, and then I asked him these questions and he gave a negative answer to most of them, as I remember it.”
The attorney for the administrator of the estate, Hon. Roger I. McDonough, now a judge of the district court, but at that time a practicing attorney, had his attention called to the existence of the purported will and a copy was fur
“At the outset we are willing to concede that in the absence of these subscribing witnesses, their subsequent declarations, either oral or written, are competent for purposes of impeachment, but for that purpose alone and none other. So to this extent we have an exception to the general hearsay rule.”
This is a fair statement of the law applicable to this evidence. 1 Page on Wills (2d Ed.) 682. The conversations and affidavits were therefore properly admitted in evidence. The learned trial judge, being the trier of the facts, was justified in concluding, as he undoubtedly did, that the impeachment of the attestation of the will by the subscribing witnesses was complete. Duffy, shortly after these interviews, left Park City and went to Ireland and there met and discussed the matter with Mrs. Levey, and together with her went before a notary public and there made affidavit in which he repudiated his former affidavit given to Judge McDonough and stated that he signed the will as a subscribing witness and that it had been executed by Grover, declared by him to be his last will and testament, and that
To be valid under the statute, Comp. Laws Utah 1917, § 6315, a will other than an olographic will or nuncupative will must be executed and attested as follows:
“1. It must be subscribed at the end thereof by the testator himself; 2. The subscription must be made in the presence of the attesting witnesses; 3. The testator must at the time of subscribing the same declare to the attesting witnesses that the instrument is his will; and, 4. There must be two attesting witnesses, each of whom must sign his name as a witness at the end of the will, at the testator’s request, in his presence, and in the presence of the other.”
Comp. Laws Utah 1917, § 6322, provides that all beneficial devises, legacies, and gifts whatever, made or given in any will to a subscribing witness thereto, are void, unless there are two other competent subscribing witnesses to the will. In this case we have a unique situation where one subscribing witness was dead; the other subscribing witness was out of the jurisdiction, and both subscribing witnesses at the time their attention was first called to the purported will after the death of the deceased entirely repudiated their attestation. Their action in so doing is free from suspicion, because it was first made to the attorney for the proponent of the will and later their repudiation was repeated and emphasized in an interview with the attorney for the contestant. The proponent made a prima facie case of the execution of the will by the testimony of the sole beneficiary who testified in effect that she was present at the execu
The relations of the deceased with Mrs. Levey and her husband while for a time confidential and amicable, certainly were not such as to make her a natural recipient of his bounty to the exclusion of his son who had been brought into the country by him, partly, at least, for the purpose of training him so he could inherit and manage the estate which the deceased had through years of thrift accumulated. While the unnaturalness and apparent injustice of a will standing alone will not make against its validity, it is a circumstance which the court is entitled to consider where the validity of the will is in serious doubt. We clearly think the trial court could not well have made different findings than he did with respect to the failure of the subscribing witnesses to sign the attestation clause in the presence of each other, in the presence of the testator, and at his request. Where such serious doubt is cast upon the existence of these essential requirements of the statute, the court could do no other than to find against the validity of the will.
The signature of the testator, if it be assumed that he actually signed this document, is not conclusive of his assent to the will. While it is not shown affirmatively that he was ignorant of its contents, it is shown by the evidence of Mrs. Levey that he did not read it in her presence and in the presence of the subscribing witnesses, nor was it read to him, and no declaration or statement is shown to have been made to or by him from which it might be inferred that he knew the contents of the will. We think it is fairly established in the evidence that Grover could not read and ■understand the written English language. Witnesses testi
The soil is not mentioned in the will. Mrs. Levey attempted to avoid the implications which must follow from this fact by saying that when Grover first mentioned his will to her she asked him if he had any family and he said no. She asked him about the boy Joe Grover and he answered he did not know him. This evidence of Mrs. Levey is entitled to very little credit, in view of the record showing the intimate and interested regard which the deceased had for the'boy and the fact that Joe Grover had lived with him in Park City for at least three years and had been held out by the deceased as his son during the entire period from 1918, when he was brought into the United States, down to the time of Grover’s death in 1926. Mrs. Levey expressed ignorance of any relationship between the two and claimed she had not even seen Joe Grover until after her return from Ireland. In view of the conclusion reached, it is unnecessary to pass on other questions raised by the assignment of errors.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed. Costs to respondent.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- In re DONG LING HING'S ESTATE. CENTRAL TRUST CO. v. DONG TEAM CHEW
- Status
- Published