Helzer v. Helzer

Citations

• 187 Pa. 243
• 41 A. 40
• 1898 Pa. LEXIS 797

Syllabus

<p>Practice, Supreme Court — Points and answers — Assignments of error— Binding instructions.</p> <p>The purpose of a point submitted to a trial court is to obtain special instructions to the jury on the law applicable to the case. Where the court itself applies the law by a binding instruction, the jury have no duty of application left to them, and the answers to points become mere theoretical discourses on the law, having no practical application to the case, and, being wholly irrelevant, they should not be assigned as error.</p> <p>Promissory notes — Lost note — Evidence—Secondary evidence — Binding instructions.</p> <p>Where in an action upon a lost note the plaintiff has produced evidence of the contents of the note, and the defendant has then produced a paper purporting to be the note, which the plaintiff,upon inspection refuses to accept as such, it is error for the court to refuse to admit any further evidence of the contents of the note and, without striking out the evidence already in, peremptorily instruct the jury to find for the defendant. In such a case the plaintiff is not bound to accept any paper produced as the genuine basis of suit, and the burden of proving it to be so is on the defendant, and when contested it is a question for the jury.</p>