Table Mountain Tunnel Co. v. Stranahan

Citations

• 21 Cal. 548

Syllabus

<p>Where the Supreme Court, in reversing a judgment and remanding the cause for a new trial, consider and pass upon a point of law, with a view to the new trial for the purposes of which it is important, the ruling upon such point, though not essential to the decision, becomes the law of the case in all its future stages.</p> <p>Thus, on an appeal from a judgment in favor of defendant in an action to recover a mining claim, the cause was remanded for a new trial on the ground that certain evidence of location offered by the plaintiff had been erroneously excluded and certain mining laws improperly admitted. In an opinion giving its reasons for the decision, the Court discussed the effect of a location in the absence of mining laws, and declared certain principles of law applicable to such locations. On the new trial the lower Court was asked by defendant to give, as an instruction to the jury, a portion of the opinion embracing the declaration of legal principles above referred to, which it refused to do : Held, on a second appeal that the rules of law thus declared in the former opinion, whether intrinsically correct or not, were the law of the case, and that it was therefore error to refuse the instruction.</p>