Thomas v. Price ex rel. Ward

Grason, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Two exceptions were taken to the rulings of the Court below, by which certain evidence offered by the appellant, was not permitted to go to the jury, and which constitute the grounds of this appeal. ⁴⁸⁴ The Court below refused to permit the witness, Hancock, to read to the jury, as evidence to sustain the garnishee’s case, certain entries in a book, made by him, not from his own knowledge of the transactions between the garnishee and Paul Jones, nor of the correctness of the itepis of the charges in the account of the former against the latter, but made exclusively from what was read to him by the witness, Lea, from memorandum books, the entries in which were made by Lea, who alone possessed any knowledge of the account between the garnishee aiid Paul Jones, and of the correctness or incorrectness of the items therein charged. The book which Hancock was about to read, was not a book of original entries, but was a mere copy of the memorandum books kept by Lea. Such a book was not admissible as evidence, and the Court below committed no error in refusing to allow its contents to be read to the jury.

Green vs. Caulk, 16 Md., 573 . The witness, Lea, then proved the number of horses kept at livery, by the appellant, for Paul Jones, and the number of days they were so kept, during several months of the year 1864, and that the charge for each horse was seventy-five cents a day, the aggregate sum for such livery being $311.75, and that the appellant had pastured horses of Paul Jones, at Mr. Gilmor’s, and had paid him therefor, $100. The appellant then offered to prove by tlie same witness that he had