Littieri v. Freda

Citations

• 241 Pa. 21
• 88 A. 82
• 1913 Pa. LEXIS 730

Syllabus

<p>Evidence — Witnesses — Ejectment — Cross-examination—Relevancy and materiality — Discretion of court — Harmless error-— Declarations of parties — Oral contracts — Res gestee — Memorandum. ,</p> <p>1. The range of a cross-examination must to a considerable extent be left to tbe sound discretion of the trial judge and unless that discretion has been plainly abused to the injury of the party complaining it is not ground for reversal.</p> <p>2. Declarations which accompany and are part of the fact or contract in controversy and tend to illustrate or explain it, such transaction itself being admissible, are also admissible as being so connected as to be a part of such fact or transaction.</p> <p>3. Entries made by private parties, in the ordinary course of their business, are admissible in evidence if they are contemporaneous with the facts to which they relate, and if they are made by parties having personal knowledge of the facts, and are corroborated by their testimony.</p> <p>4. In an action of ejectment to recover possession of land alleged to have been conveyed in fraud of creditors, in which one question at issue is whether or not defendant had paid a certain amount in cash at the time of the delivery of the deed, it is not an abuse of discretion for the court to exclude inquiries addressed to the original owner of the property, on cross examination, as to what he did with the money after he received it.</p> <p>5. In such a case it is not error for the court to refuse to permit plaintiff to ask the defendant upon cross-examination where he obtained the money with which he paid off certain liens against the property in question and whether he had the money at the time or obtained it by loan, where there is no offer to show that such money came from the grantor and defendant was not even asked whether the money which he used for such payment belonged to the grantor or was his own; and this is particularly true where the excluded questions came after a long examin