Brown v. Harkins

Citations

• 131 F. 63
• 65 C.C.A. 301
• 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 4267

Syllabus

<p>1. Documents — Secondary Evidence — Proof of Loss.</p> <p>Rev. St. § 3303 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2157], requires every distiller to keep a book in which shall be recorded certain facts specified with reference to his business; and section 3318 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2164], after providing for the books to be so kept, declares that every person required to keep the books prescribed by such section shall on or before the 10th day of each month make a full and complete transcript of all the entries made therein during the month preceding, and, after verifying the same by oath, shall forward it to the collector of the district in which he resides. Held, in an action by a distiller to recover internal revenue taxes alleged to have been wrongfully imposed, that evidence that plaintiff’s record book had been taken from him and carried to a certain collector’s office, after which it was taken to the revenue agent’s office at G., and was last seen in 1893 or 1894, tliree years after the final disposition of a criminal case against plaintiff, and that search had been made in the office of the revenue agent, where it had last been seen, without proof that a search had been made in the collector’s office for the transcript on which the assessment made was required to be filed, nor in the office of the clerk where the original record had been used in evidence in the criminal proceeding, was insufficient to justify the admission of oral evidence of contents of such record.</p>