Waters v. Waters

Bartol, C. J., delivered the opinion of this Court. These appeals have been argued together, and as they involve the same questions, will be considered and disposed of in the same way. No principle is better established than that a decision of the Court of Appeals once pronounced in any case is binding upon the Court below and upon this Court in the subsequent proceedings in the same case, and cannot be disregarded or called in question. It is the law of the case binding and conclusive upon the parties, not open to question or examination afterwards in the same case.

If this were not so, controversies would be endless; “ debet finis esse litium,” is the maxim which has been invariably applied by this Court, whenever this question has arisen. On the former appeal between these parties, decided at October Term, 1866, it was finally adjudged, that the action of the Circuit Court before which the trial of the issues was pending, in setting aside the verdict of the jury and awarding a new trial, was within the exercise of the legal discretion vested in that Court, final in its nature and not subject to examination on appeal, and the appeal was therefore dismissed. The legal effect of that decision was that the ruling of the Circuit Court stood unreversed. The verdict having been set aside and a new trial ordered, the cause stood as if no trial had taken place, and no verdict had been rendered; ²³ and the verdict of the jury therefore rendered upon the second trial was in contemplation of law the only verdict in the cause, for the government and direction of the Orphans’ Court.

The object of the appellants in the several petitions filed by them in the Orphans’ Court, and contained in the records before ns, seems to bo to re-open before the Orphans’ Court the question of the propriety of granting the new trial, and in that way to have re-examined in the Orphans’ Court, and perhaps in this Court by another appeal, the same questions which were finally determined in the cause upon the former appeal. Such an attempt is wholly inadmissible. By the petition filed on the sixth day of May, 1867, the appellants ask that the record shall be remanded to the Cireuit Court for two canses: 1st. “That the Judge of the Circuit Court has not ordered a full transcript of all the proceedings in the said case to be certified to the Orphans’ Court.” 2d. “ That it does not appear from the certificate of the said Judge, how the ease originating in the (Irphans’ Court of Montgomery county, came into the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel county for trial, or by what authority the said Judge certified in the said case to the Orphans’ Court of Montgomery county.” An inspection of the record furnishes a complete answer to this petition. The transcript sent to the Orphans’ Court contains all the proceedings from