Mumford v. Bowne — 1 Ant. N.P. Cas. 56

Majority

p. 56

Mumford against Bowne, et al.

Headnote

What proof of the records of a court of vice-admiralty, sufficient. Parol evidence of the contents of papers collateral to the merits of the cause, sufficient.

Assumpsit, on a policy of insurance on profits.

The vessel had been captured 'and carried into Bermuda, and there acquitted by the admiralty court. Immediately upon information of her capture, she was abandoned by the plaintiff to the defendant and the Columbian Insurance Company, the insurers on ship and cargo. After her acquittal at Bermuda, she arrived safe at New York, and was sold by the Columbia!! Insurance Company, under the abandonment.

To prove these facts, the plaintiff first produced a copy of the vice-admiralty records, and proved the hand-writing of the judge, and of the register of the court, to the certificate, that the papers were a true copy from the records. This was objected to, as being insufficient. But Van Ness, J., decided that the proceedings were sufficiently proved.^[1]

p. 57

As to the other facts of the insurance at the Columbian office, abandonment there, &c., the plaintiff offered parol proof.

P. W. Radcliff

objected to the plaintiff’s giving parol proof of the insurance and abandonment. The papers ought to be produced.

Parol evidence of the contents of papers

p. 58

may be given, where they do not form the foundation of . the cause, but merely relate to some collateral fact.^[1]

S. Jones, for the plaintiff.

P. W. Radcliff, for the defendants.

(2) (2) In Southwick v. Stevens, for a libel, ( 10 Johns. 443 ,) .the judge at mm prius, allowed the plaintiff to proye, by parol, the averment in his declaration, “ that he was state printer, and president of the Mechanic’s and Farmer’s Bank.” And the admissibility of this evidence having been made a point on a motion for a new trial, the court decided that parol proof was admissible. That those facts were only inducement, and introduced as collateral matter, and not as matter in issue, and that the practice is not to require such strict technical proof of collateral facts, as if they were facts in issue. That it is every day’s practice, to give parol proof in such cases of matters of fact, susceptible even of proof of the most solemn kind. Vide post, People v. Gilbert, 191.