Opinion
June Term, 1824.
In case for deceit in the sale of a runaway negro, who was alleged to be unsound, the defense was that the plaintiff knew it before purchasing, and evidence was offered that plaintiff's wife had carried food to the negro, who was lurking about plaintiff's farm, before the purchase. Held, that such evidence was inadmissible.
CASE. The declaration was for a deceit in the sale of a negro. The defense set up was that the real situation of the negro, who was consumptive, was as well known to the plaintiff as to the defendant, and even better. The negro, a short time before the plaintiff purchased him, was a runaway, and to bring home the fact of plaintiff's knowledge of his situation, defendant was permitted to prove that, while the negro was a runaway, he had been seen two or three times lurking about the plantations in the neighborhood of the plaintiff, at whose house the negro's wife was. The plaintiff knew that he was a runaway, repeatedly expressed a wish to purchase him, and applied to an individual to go and purchase him while he was a runaway. Another witness for the defendant said that he had seen the negro, while he was a runaway, twice at his (the witness's) house in the plaintiff's neighborhood. Defendant's counsel then asked witness whom he had seen bringing food to the (123) negro, and stated that he expected to prove that the person was plaintiff's wife. The court deemed the evidence inadmissible against the husband, unless it were shown, first, that the husband was at home at the time, or had seen the wife going, or in some way assented to it. There was a verdict for the plaintiff, and the case stood before this Court on a motion for a new trial because of the improper rejection of evidence.
Evidence is of two kinds: that which, if true, directly proves the fact in issue, and that which proves another fact from which the fact in issue may be inferred. The rules regarding competency only apply to the first kind of competency, and relevancy to the second. The court protects the jury both from incompetent and irrelevant evidence. The farther removed the fact to be inferred is from the fact proven the less is the probability, for in each inference there may be an error; and the rules of evidence are framed more with a view to exclude falsehood than to let in the truth. They are said in this particular not to be unlike the rule of descent in excluding the half-blood, which is subsidiary to the grand canon that none shall succeed to the inheritance but one of the blood of the first purchaser. The subsidiary rule deprives many who are of the blood of the first purchaser of the inheritance; but by a rigid adherence to it none but one of the blood can succeed. That the fact to be inferred often accompanies the fact proven is not sufficient; it should most usually accompany it; and I would say, in the absence of all circumstances, that it should rarely otherwise happen. But the strong objection in this case is that there must be two inferences drawn to wit: the wife saw and fed the slave, ergo she knew (124) he was diseased; that the wife knew it, ergo the husband knew it, being informed by her. An error in either inference, which might very well happen, would introduce a falsehood; which, as I have before said, is an object of more solicitude than the exclusion of the truth. The judge, I think, was right in refusing the evidence. The rule for a new trial must be discharged.