Flaherty v. McCormick

Citations

• 123 Ill. 525
• 14 N.E. 846

Syllabus

<p>1. Chancery—what proceedings become a matter of record—office of a certificate of the chancellor—of exceptions to rulings. All oral motions in. a chancery case should be noted upon the clerk’s docket, and a minute made thereof by the judge, and the motions, with the orders made thereon, should be duly entered of record by the clerk. By this means they become a matter of record, without the aid of a certificate of the judge. So, written motions, when filed, become a part of the record, and a certificate of the judge showing the same is unnecessary and inoperative.</p> <p>2. The certificate of the judge in a chancery case, as to what the motions and orders were, is as inoperative and as much out of place as a statement in a bill of exceptions of the pleadings, and the rulings of the court in respect to them, would be in a case at law. Under the practice, the only certificate which an appellate tribunal can receive is one of the evidence.</p> <p>3. The sole office or function of a certificate of evidence in a chancery case is to truly set forth the evidence offered, rejected, received and considered on the hearing, and any attempt to make it subserve any other purpose is without warrant of law.</p> <p>4. In chancery cases it is never proper to take exceptions to the rulings of the court, as it would be, under like circumstances, at law. All motions, proceedings and orders must be entered of record, and on appeal or error all the motions and orders, with the pleadings and the files in the case, constitute the record upon which the case is reheard. On the hearing of the appeal, the question is not so much as to whether the lower court ruled properly upon this or that question, as it is in cases at law, but whether, upon the whole record, the decree is right.</p> <p>5. While a bill of exceptions, in a case at law, usually performs the same office, yet its chief function, as its name implies, is to preserve exceptions to the rulings of the court upon motions and questio