Williams v. Conger

Syllabus

<p>If the removal of a public record from its place of deposit is not prohibited by reason of public policy, if constitutes, when legitimately removed, the best evidence of its contents and of its authenticity.</p> <p>An original muniment of title produced from the .public archives in which it is required by law to be deposited, certified by the public officer who has custody of it, and identified by him as a witness, is sufficiently authenticated to authorize it to be offered in evidence..</p> <p>A charge in an action to try title to real estate which instructed the jury that if they believe that a paper offered in evidence cpntaining a signature of a party under whom both'parties’ claim was as old as its date imported,- and that it had been preserved in the public archives as the initial paper in the grant, they might give to these circumstances the weight of direct testimony to the genuineness of the signature, and if the other proof did not in their judgment overbear its weight, might find the signature to be proved, neither takes from the jury the determination of the weight of evidence, nor submits to it a question that should be decided by the court.</p> <p>Papers not otherwise competent cannot be introduced in evidence .for the mere purpose of enabling a jury to institute a comparison of handwriting; but where other writings, admitted or proved to be genuine, are properly in evidence for other purposes, the handwriting of such instruments may be compared by the jury with that of the instrument or signature in question, and its genuineness inferred from such comparison.</p> <p>When the plaintiff and the defendant both claim title under the same original application, and one introduces it in evidence and establishes its identity, the other is estopped from denying the genuineness of the signature to it of the party tinder whom both claim.</p> <p>One claiming under .a deed forty years old, through several mense conveyances, may offer the deed in evidence as an