Razor v. Razor

Citations

• 149 Ill. 621

Syllabus

<p>1. Practice—right of defendant to open and close case to jury. A wife filed her bill against her husband, claiming a separate maintenance on account of his desertion without her fault. The husband, by his answer and cross-bill, denied that he deserted his wife, and sought a divorce on the ground of adultery on her part. At the conclusion of the evidence the defendant moved the court for permission to open and close the case to the jury, which the court refused: Held, no reversible error.</p> <p>2. If the husband had eliminated the issue of desertion, as he might, by justifying the separation upon the ground of his wife’s adultery, he might have had the right to open and close the case to the jury; and while the court might, in the exercise of sound discretion, have allowed the defendant to open and close, the ruling of the court was not reversible error.</p> <p>3. Evidence—letter found in wife’s possession — proving adultery. On the trial of a bill by a husband for a divorce, the court refused to admit in evidence, against the wife, a letter alleged to have been found by the husband in his wife’s trunk, and containing a proposition by the writer to meet her in St. Louis for improper and adulterous purposes. The letter was addressed to “Gertie,” the wife’s familiar name, on the inside, and was addressed on the envelope to “Mrs. Vosburg, Box 99Held, that the court properly refused to admit the letter.</p> <p>4. Such letter, if addressed to the wife and found in her possession, would not be evidence against her unless its contents had been adopted or sanctioned by some reply or statement, or act done on her part, shown by proof aliunde the letter itself. Her silence, and retention of the letter, do not necessarily imply assent to its contents. Where verbal communications are made, silence may authorize an inference of assent; but the same rule does not ordinarily apply to letters received, but never answ-ered or in any way acted upon.</p> <p>5. The recital in a lett