Cumberland Coal & Iron Co. v. Jeffries

Bartol, J., delivered the opinion of this Court. This record contains two appeals: the first from the judgment rendered against the appellants, who were defendants below ; the second from the order of the Circuit Court awarding execution on the judgment. The first appeal comes up on four bills of exceptions, which will be considered in their order ; premising that the suit Avas an action of trespass quare clausum fregit; the declaration alleged that the defendants “broke and entered certain lands of the plaintiff, &c., and then and there trod down and trampled upon and destroyed the plaintiff’s grass and crops then and there groAving, and ploughed up and destroyed the groAving crops of the plaintiff, and prevented him from using and enjoying the same, and divers other Avrougs,” &c., &c. The defendants pleaded severally “not guilty.” The Cumberland Coal and Iron Company pleaded liberum tenementum.

The defendants, Tracy, Yan Deusen and Corcoran, each pleaded in justification that the title and right of possession to the lands, Avas in the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company, and they entered as its servants and by its command. ⁵³³ The suit was instituted on the 28th day of February, 1862. The plaintiff gave in evidence a written lease of the lands from the C. O. & I. Co., dated 30th March, 1859, by which they were demised to him for one year from 1st of April, 1859. He then gave in evidence “a notice to quit,” directed to him by the Company, dated 25th February, 1860, requiring him to give up the possession at the end of the then current year of his tenancy. He then offered in evidence the warrant and other proceedings instituted by the C. C. & I. Co., in April, 1860, under the 53d Article of the Code of Public General Laws, for the purpose of recovering the possession of the lands in question, with the judgment of the Justices thereon, refusing to award restitution.

To the admission of this testimony the defendants took their first bill of exceptions. In the judgment of this Court the testimony was admissible. In the argument in this Court it was objected that as to three of the defendants, Tracy, Yan Deusen and Corcoran, it was res inter alios, but they having pleaded in justification the rights of the C. C. & I. Co., stand in the same position as the Company, and the evidence was admissible against them as well as the Company. The same rule applies to the evidence contained in the second exception, which comprised the papers, proceedings, and docket entries in an action of ejectment, then pending, for the same land, brought against the appellee by the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company in the Circuit Court for Allegany County, and we affirm the ruling of the Circuit Court on that exception also.

The third exception was taken to the admission of the testimony of several witnesses to prove the facts that had been deposed by one Henry Insheep, a witness sworn and examined at the trial before the Justices of the Peace, and who had since died. The object of this testimony was to prove an agreement by the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company made with the ⁵³⁴ plaintiff in the Spring of 1859, to grant him an extension of the lease after the expiration of the term. We have said that the proceedings .had before the Justices were admissible evidence against all the defendants in this case, because they are not strangers to each other, but all justify under the alleged title of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company; any evidence therefore that tends to prove a right of possession in the plaintiff as against the Company is