Mitchell v. Mitchell's Lessee

Mason, J., delivered the opinion of this court. We do not deem it important to pass any opinion upon the peculiar structure of the appellee’s prayer, by which this case is presented, a question so forcibly argued by the opposite counsel. Whatever may be the supposed defects of this prayer, a reversal of the judgment, with a view to their correction, would not ultimately vary the substantial merits of the controversy, which rests upon facts, few, simple and undisputed, and which, in our judgment, could not be materially altered or added to,- by any subsequent proceedings which might be had in the case, short of the introduction of testimony intended to assail the validity of the will itself; and vve do not understand the appellant as contending for any such object. This is not a case where extrinsic evidence would be admitted to explain the meaning or intention of the testator.

Extrinsic evidence is only admissible to explain latent ambiguities in testamentary or other instruments of writing, and such we understand to have been the case of Walston vs. White, 5 Md. Rep., 297 , relied upon in argument by the appellant’s counsel. The present record discloses a question- of title dependent upon the interpretation of the language used by the testator in his will, considered with reference to the condition of the several parties who claim under it, and we must proceed to give that interpretation. At this point we are met by the counsel for the appellee with a decision of the former Court of Appeals, (Mitchell vs. Mitchell, 2 Gill, 230 ,) in regard to this identical will, in connection with the same state of facts now before us, and it is insisted that the former decision'has settled the law of the case, and that we are concluded by it. The conclusiveness of that decision is the controlling, and indeed the only question involved in this appeal.

A decision by the Court of Appeals must be regarded as binding- and final in- all subsequent litigation- between' the ²³⁴ same parties, and upon the same subject matter of controversy: and if an exposition of a will has been made, by which the title to property has been settled, that exposition should be deemed irrevocable as between the same parties and those claiming under them'. These principles are distinctly affirmed by the case of Hammond's