Boyd v. Kellog

Burke, J., delivered the opinion' of the Court. This is an appeal from a judgment of the Circuit Court for Howard County. The amended declaration upon which the case was tried charged the appellee with negligence in guarding and looking after a fire which she had started on ⁴³ her own property, and that in consequence of such negligence the fire spread over the lands of the appellant and burned and destroyed her timber, rails and fences. At the conclusion of the plaintiff’s case, the Court granted a prayer which directed a verdict in favor of the defendant, — the Court being of opinion that under the pleadings and evidence the plaintiff had offered no evidence legally sufficient to entitle her to recover.

A motion has been made by the appellee to dismiss the appeal, and we are of opinion that this motion must prevail. The thirty-second rule of the Circuit Court for Howard County relating to exceptions taken -to the rulings of the Court and the preparation and signing of bills of exception provides that, “in every case, unless otherwise expressly allowed by the Court, the bill of exceptions shall be prepared and submitted to the Court during the sittings of the term at which such exceptions shall be taken.” This rule was considered by this Court in Sieling v. Bunner, 117 Md. 682 , and the appeal in that case was dismissed upon the authority of the case of Livers v. Ardinger, 90 Md. 36 . In that case the Court construed the forty-first rule of the Circuit Court for Washington County which was identical in language with that portion of the rule of the Circuit Court for Howard County above quoted." In dealing with the facts disclosed by the record in that case and in determining the proper construction to be placed upon the rule, the Court said: “After rhe continuous sitting from day to day has ceased; after the jury was discharged for the term, and presumably after the general business, as indicated by the calendar, had been disposed of, there were sittings on special days, during which special matters were attended to; for instance, on one occasion, a motion to quash was heard; on another, several parties were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment; on another, jurors for the ensuing term were drawn, and on other occasions nothing at all. Can these special sittings be parts of the ‘sittings of the term,’ as contemplated by the Court ⁴⁴ which prepared and established the Rule ?• Such a construction would not be effectual to work any change whatever in the rule theretofore in force, by which a party had the whole term during which to submit his bills of exception.

We are of opinion that the purpose of the rule was to require the presentation of bills of exception, to be made at a 'time when the testimony given at the trial and the course of its events were still fresh in the minds of Court and counsel. It was therefore, ordered that the attention of the Court should be called to the exceptions, during the period when the general business of the term was being disposed of, and before the minds of the judges had become occupied with other matters. To postpone the submission of bills of exception to a time more remote than this could only result in uncertainties as to what had' actually occurred at the trial, and by